This job sure entails a diverse range of items, from architectural millwork, sliding doors, to furniture, to windows, and so forth. It’s fun in that respect.
I’ve been working on the round window for the Japanese alcove. I considered various ways to make a round window, and in the end decided that glue up from solid segments made the most sense. I chose a decagonal arrangement of pieces as a compromise between grain straightness and overall complexity.
After gluing up pieces in a couple of stages, I had two half-rings of 5 pieces each. These were then tuned along their abutting ends with a hand plane:
Once that was satisfactory, I could proceed with the glue up:
All of the joints have an internal spline.
With the glue up done, I proceeded to process the cuts to make a round, lipped window frame:
A bit of table sawing with the rip blade cut away the remainder of the waste and I cleaned up the surfaces of the flange by plane:
Then some additional smoothing work to finish the cut out out phase:
On goes the finish, in the end 5 coats applied and hand rubbed between in total:
It’s nice to use Enduro Var as it allows me to get several coats on per day.
The spline ends are exposed, but fairly discrete, so I doubt they will be noticed:
The cusped window is done, and has been waxed:
The alcove has a floor on each side. The alcove proper has a single piece black cherry slab, now into its 4th coat of finish:
The other side of the alcove, which features the round window and the staggered shelves, has an avodire floor, and is a glue-up of 4 pieces:
The glue up produces a panel which appears to have a thicker edge than it actually does. I couldn’t find wide 8/4 avodire, and the widest I could find in 4/4 was 14″ or so, hence my approach to the fabrication of this piece.
The black cherry toko-bashira, or alcove post, is done and into the finishing process:
The transom for the Japanese room, or ranma, is done:
The wenge frame corners were kerfed on the milling machine for a pair of splines each:
I used a conventional woodworking 3-wing slot cutter, however this got me thinking that it will be nice at some future point to obtain some larger slotting cutters and arbor for the mill.
A closer look – the slot cutter is nice as it leaves a crisp flat-bottomed cut:
The work was accomplished by 2 fixturing positions and two angle settings of the rotary table.
Another look:
The splines are their own bit of entertainment to make, as they are quite thin (3/32″/ 2.4mm). They came out well and were glued in soon after the slotting was done:
This unit will be installed between a pair of plant-on posts:
Another view – I hope you agree that the avodire and wenge work well together:
There have been some design modifications to the toko-waki (the flanking portion of the alcove which has the round window and staggered shelves. The window has been moved up in height and the shelves dropped down, so the current arrangement now looks like this:
Those shelves will be one of the next items I tackle, along with the framing for the sliding doors behind the round window. Lots to do yet, and installation is slated for the end of this month.
Thanks for visiting the Carpentry way and hope to see you again soon! Post 15 follows.