Post 57 in an ongoing series describing the design and construction of a kabukimon, a type of Japanese gate. This is a project for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
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Another snowstorm rolling in this afternoon. I’m no longer surprised by such happenings. If it keeps snowing like this though, the MFA garden might still be buried a month from now, making the gate installation schedule a question mark in my mind. I’ve heard total snow accumulation in Boston is something over 5′ (1.5m), and there hasn’t been any warm weather to melt any of it away so far this year.
Managed to get a few more hours in at the shop this morning, which allowed me to complete most of the remaining tenoning work on the door parts:
The top and bottom rails for the side door have the twin 10mm tenons, while the side door battens have the single 10mm tenon:
I was able to reconfigure the tenon heads fairly easily to cut the single tenons – you can just see a small band of protruding end grain which was not trimmed, however this will be simple to clean up later.
Another view of the pile of rails and battens for both doors:
There are tenons yet to cut on one end of the main door battens, and I will probably cut these on the shaper as well. I will need to re-stack the cutters on one of the Zuani heads. If it isn’t workable, the tenons can be readily cut by other methods are they are single tenons not twin.
There are some tasks to be done yet on these tenons, including haunching, and it really shouldn’t take too much time at all to work my way through the pile. I’ve found that with the Martin shaper it has been straightforward to keep to a +/- 0.1mm in terms of target dimensions.
I forgot I have an Aigner Distometer (a specialized tool for measuring shaper cutter height/projection relative to the table or fence) which I could be using to possibly refine the dimensions a bit more, however I don’t think it is necessary. I would like to experiment with the Distometer though to see how accurately the spindle height can be set. It’s a powered raise/lower affair, and the readout is in 0.1mm increments, so I’m curious to see if I can obtain better accuracy.
A tenth of a mm is equal to about 0.0039″, for reference’s sake, for those who find themselves blanking out or getting distracted when metric values appear anywhere in view (not that such would describe any readers here of course).
All for now – have a great weekend! Up next is post 58
Looks just awesome, Chris!
Julie,
thanks! I appreciate your comment.
I'm glad I made the investments in the shaper and the tooling. It just opens up a world of possibilities in terms of making the joinery for framed structures like doors and windows with relative ease, high accuracy, and within a short time frame.
~C
Will you be doing a dry of the gate in the shop before heading out to the MFA?
Ralph,
thanks for the question. A dry fit before installation? Absolutely. That's what the middle two weeks of March will be about.
~C
Parts look sharp and crisp! Stay warm out there.
Using you table saw as an ironing board?
Siavosh,
thanks – doing my best to stay warm and really looking forward to when temps climb above freezing.
~C
Joe,
well, that's the bandsaw I might note, not the table saw, and I was wondering if anyone might notice the iron, so you get the nod for sharp eyes.
To give you a question in return: any idea what I might be doing with a clothes iron in my shop?
~C
taking out bruises with a damp cloth and iron!
Yea, I realized that after I posted, my bad. I “clicked” to fast! (My brother just picked up alike new Laguna 24 X 24) So …you could be using the iron to do veneer work like Rob Millard, or you could be doing some “iron on” edge banding…but I doubt it…… no….I think you use the iron, to remove any dents/bruises that occur during the processing of this wood.
Edge banding? What's that? Hah!
Yep, that iron has seen a fair bit of use taking out little dings and dents in the wood, which seem to mysteriously multiply overnight of their own accord.
~C