Gateway (59)

Post 59 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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I went and picked up the metal shoes and associated parts from the powder-coating place. The parts look great!:

Another view:

These are the decorative bolt/nut caps, also looking fine:

The Japanese term for these caps is chi-kanamono (乳金物). The kanji for this can also be read as chi-chi kanamono – – kanamono meaning ‘hardware’.  The word ‘chi’ stems from a pictograph of a mother holding a baby at her breast to feed, so it more or less means ‘breast form’ in this context. There is an associated fastener that goes through the middle of the cup which resembles an associated anatomical part. 

The cups will fit like this on the outside of the shoes, two per side:

Now, for the woodwork…

I ended up discovering that the tenons on the battens for the side door were undersize by 0.5mm, which was odd considering I had set the tenoning head up exactly according to the supplied drawings. Then I re-shimmed the head to adjust 0.5mm up, which then formed tenons which were 0.4mm bigger-  still a hair undersize. That was puzzling. I re-shimmed twice more until I had the desired dimensions. It was a little weird to find that I could add shims and not achieve the exact difference in the wood that had been contributed by the shim, but I will hold off drawing too many conclusions about the cutter head until I have thoroughly checked out the set up and alignment of the sliding table on the shaper. For the time being, I have learned not to assume anything and check every dimension on the tenon when using the tenoning head.

In the end, though I wasted a bit of wood and time, I produced the parts required to frame the side door with rails and battens:

A closer look:

Here are the twin-tenoned ends of two of the main door rails, which have reached the near the end of cut out:

Main door battens also through to the same point of completion:

I finished the day by mortising the main door hinge-side stiles for the rails, and got the parts started in fitting, what might be called ‘gangland stile’:

The tenons insert a couple of centimeters at this point, which is all they need to do for the time being:

I’ll flare the mortises on the exit faces before fitting the tenons all the way in.

A closer look:

The tricky bit to these connections are the fits of the double mitered tongues and housings. The housings are yet to be cut, though you can plainly see them marked out.

I anticipate that I should be able to complete the main door joinery and fitting up tomorrow, which will leave Saturday for working on the side door frame fitting and then maybe I can start on the panels. I had wanted to complete the doors by Saturday, but it looks like I will run a day or two over.
Overall, I’m a day or three behind at this point, what with the winter storms and other delays. You do the best you can, plan carefully and deal with whatever unexpected things come your way.

All for this time. Thanks for visiting. Post 60 up next.