This is the 32nd part of a series, originally envisioned to be a bit shorter (!). Somehow this project has become a little more involved though – hardly a new situation for me I must say. If you’re new to this page and wonder what on earth I am up to, please look to the archive sidebar at the right of the screen from previous installments in the series. If you wish to look at other material and projects of mine, simply dig further back into the archive – about 6 weeks back or more I suppose, and as far back as January-February posts for other furniture pieces.
Today I want to detail the construction of some joinery to secure the lower ends of the barge boards to the lower set of roof boards. I was intending to attach the barge boards to the keta ends as well, however that plan changed, mostly due to the difficulties in making a good connection in that location.
The first step was to process the dovetail slots for the drawbar and wedges:
I had a little piece of Bloodwood, into the end of which I cut a male dovetail. Then I sawed the piece into individual strips. each of which will become a drawbar:
The individual Bloodwood pieces were planed on one side, then dovetailed – here’s the product of that stage, the rough upper surface of the bars exposed to view:
Checking the fit:
Here’s a look at the underside of one of the lower roof boards, fitted with the Bloodwood drawbars and the sliding double dovetail key that attach the board to the short side keta nose:
Then I planed the upper sides of the drawbars flush with the board surface, using my Ichihiro 70mm finishing plane:
Then I marked the drawbars to their mortises using a chisel:
Next it was time to cut the cross-wise dovetail mortises:
And a little clean-up with a kote nomi (crank-neck chisel):
Now the bar and its cross-wise dovetail mortise are pretty much ready to go:
It was time to make the fixing pins, which are also dovetailed. These I made out of Ebony, a small strip of which – at a suitable thickness – I happened to have on hand:
I find a pencil is fine for laying out on Ebony, as the gray mark contrasts with the black fairly well.
Then I had to rip the piece to width, a hateful task with a handsaw (for some reason, Ebony is unpleasant to saw, at least with the saws I have on hand):
Once dimensioned, the Ebony strips were cut into rough lengths, and then dovetailed. Here’s the 4 pins:
Now a quick check of the fit of the pins:
Then the pins were inscribed with identifying marks with a chisel, and voila!, the drawbar and pin components were ready:
That’s all the pictures today – next installment I’ll show the remainder of the cut-out and fitting of these lower drawbar joints. Stay tuned.