Build Thread

[yojimbo]

I'd suggest (lacking any more expert and useful direction), taking a burl that you consider to be somewhat expendable, and trying to cut it and see how it goes..

Yeah-but... with what kind of saw? Power? Hand saw (wouldn't they kill it?)?

Will take your advice and post in another thread. Thanks, Steve.

Back to our regularly scheduled build thread.

[Sheets]

Continuing a bit with the re-theme.

Yesterday I went biking. I would have gone the day before, but my daughter called up and wanted help with a project (I had to wire a plug for her). Now I took it easy, since Dec 8 last year was the last time I was on my bike (I always take a break over the winter- no indoor trainer or spin classes. Biking from March to December, well it gets a little repetitive, so I enjoy the break and look forward to starting again in the spring). I also said to myself, that I should wait a day before the next ride since certain body parts need to re-adjust to the activity. Well, today I spent time outside working and looking at the beautiful sun, and it was warm (unseasonably so), so I decided by mid afternoon to go again. Not exactly a mistake, but, I do feel a little bit funny - the body not yet accustomed to the activity (particularly me ####) and, as luck would have it, the wind was off the water by afternoon and COLD. Not a drop of sweat. No power in the legs. Ah well, no fool like an old fool.

Also, speaking of “Play Again”, my bike rides typically have me stopping at the halfway/turn around point where there is a Tim Horton’s coffeee place (I’m not that much of a fool). Anyway, this time of year is their “Roll Up The Rim” contest (where you actually roll up the rim of the paper cup to see if you won anything). Naturally, I see the words “Play Again”.

So, on to the door. Sad to say, but “Play Again” has also hit me once more. Anyway, I re-cut and re-joined the replacement frame parts as previously explained. But, I laid one of these suppoesdly correctly made verticals against the inner stile and found another error.

I’m afeared you people will think all I do is make mistakes. So, while digesting the impact of this “problem”, I needed to find out where I had gone wrong. When I do my math, I eschew computers and calculators, believing that using my brain and doing it long-hand is a good thing. Where the machines will give out garbage when garbage is put in, they will also put out right when the input is right. My brain, alas, can input right, but output wrong. Not a big error mind you, in case that makes it any better.

One of the “fun” aspects of DIY is having to deal with certain unknowns as they occur. Anyway, this mistake is small and easily accounted for. When I was calculating (in my head) the spacing for the horizontal kumiko (laid out on the verticals), I used 7.83 mm instead of 7.91 mm. This accumulates at the very top and bottom of my window space as a 4.8 mm gap. I could have left it as is and just adjusted the last joint of the vertical kuniko. But having expounded to some length on “correct” kumiko spacing, I decided to adjust the upper and lower frame parts to accommodate the error and have the kumiko “windows” all exactly uniform. I (simply) moved inward the top/bottom frame mortices by 5 mm and then made thin shims to fill the gap below these parts. If I didn’t tell you, you probably wouldn’t notice (this time).

So the shims I glued on and then planed to the right depth.

I’m also including a couple of pics of the re-cut half laps. This is to illustrate (again) the beauty of using a marking knife (kiridashi). If you look at the difference between the edge of the kerf, where the outer limit was marked with the knife, the edge is so perfectly smooth, while the other has a bit of raggedness. If I had used a pencil, not only would I have possibly made errors due to the pencil mark thickness, but there would be no cleanly cut edge to my joint. Now granted, this example is easily covered up with final planing or sanding (provided one left allowances for it), but on larger surfaces with larger saws, the tear-out from the saw teeth can go pretty deep. Using a knife simply avoids even having to worry about it.

[Sheets]

Yeah-but... with what kind of saw? Power? Hand saw (wouldn't they kill it?)?

Will take your advice and post in another thread. Thanks, Steve.

Back to our regularly scheduled build thread.

Well I'd say that a handsaw made for hardwood would work (lots of work perhaps). But, if that isn't going well, try a power tool (but I can see holding it - burl and tool - maybe problematic). Anyway, I'm not being helpful (speaking from the cuff as it were - from whence I know naught of what I speak).

No need to apologize. I think its great this forum is alive and well.

[NeilS]

Since we were talking about saws (lo, these many comments ago), I'm gonna pop a quick question in here -- I have some burls that need cutting. And I have no idea what to use that won't be immediately dulled by them. Anyone got any suggestions? How would you guys do it?

Becky - my experience is with cutting burls for woodturning, so may not be relevant to your purpose.

In my case, I rough cut with a chainsaw then dimension my turning blanks with a bandsaw. Burls can be hard on the blades. The chainsaw can be easily resharpened and the blades replaced on the bandsaw. But, I wouldn't use any of my good handsaws on the hard burls we have. If I had to hand cut a burl I would use a bowsaw with a replaceable blade, the type you can buy quite cheaply from your local hardware shop. They cut with quite a wide kerf and will wander if not fully tensioned up, but it will get the job done quickly, albeit a bit roughly.

.....

[yojimbo]

Thanks, Neil, will pick one up today.

[Sheets]

No biking today (inspite of another perfect day for it). No, today was major assembly day.

Everything went very well, except a couple of the dowels made a nasty mess on exit (always on the underside of the work where you can’t see it until its too late). I tried to compensate for the fact that the dowels would be off kilter as they try to line up with the off center holes. But I think I gave the pine more credit for strength than I should have. This and there would be considerable friction as well, so I’ll chalk this up to a learning experience. I’ll have to chop out the broken fibers and glue in some filler pieces. All part of dealing with those unexpected happenings. A rosey bit of luck though (or, as I see it, all part of my devilishly clever plan), is the repair can be hidden by a strap hinge.

The rails had to be coaxed on with a hammer (the spacing being too long to use a clamp), so I made a small piece of wood which fit into the groove so as not to have to hit the outer edges of the groove (even with a piece of wood as protection, I think the fibers could have been crushed or broken with an errant hit).

To get the outer stiles on, I could use the long pipe clamps to help draw things together and only needed a little help from the hammer. I only applied glue to the groove on the outer stiles and the tenons on the rail ends. That should be enough to keep things from shifting with gravity over the years. Once the glue had dried, I removed the clamps and flush cut the dowels.

The last pic is of the door as it is. Its over exposed, so I’ll take another next time I have it outside.

So that’s it for today. I’ll take my random orbital sander and smooth the major frame, which still has its rough surface. Then I need to make the actual kumiko pieces next as well as the panels (which I’m still wrestling with trying to decide what wood to use).

Thanks for reading and hope you’re all enjoying the weekend.

Steve

[Sheets]

The problem with aiming for the bull’s eye, is you are more likely to miss. So why not aim wide where you’re garanteed to miss? That way you will always be successful.

My projects are like that. I don’t aim for perfection (good thing, or I’d be one discouraged puppy).

Anyway, I chopped (sounds a little harsh - maybe chiselled, or perhaps nomi-uchi sounds more sophisticated) the wood from around my dowel holes that were wide of the bull’s eye, squaring them up and then made some wooden plugs to glue in. Nor pretty, but will do the job and the worst will be hidden by a hinge. All part of the character of this door.

Next I’ll sand the surfaces and get on with cutting the kumiko.

Yesterday I took a pause to make the graphics on kanna that I posted under the kanna tutorial thread. I won’t make up any coprehensive written instructions, because there are lots of pics and videos on the web that anyone can find and watch it being done. You always learn more by doing, so eventually one has to decide they have enough theory to take the shot - expecting to be short of perfection the first time or two.

[Sheets]

Between a rainy day and some drier, but decidedly colder days, I managed to sand one side of the door, pick-up the hardware from Lee Valley and visit a friend with a bandsaw. I also found myself “diverted” with trying to finish sharpen the kanna refered to in the “Kanna vs Genno” thread.

I’ve decided to use some elm to make my panels. I rumaged a little ways down my stack of elm boards and pulled a couple out that would yield enough wood for the job (well, any of the boards would have enough wood, but my stack is hard to access being back against a wall in the garage and most effectively blockaded behind much “stuff”. All of which to say is the garage is a mess). The big problem with these elm board is their thickness - about 30 mm. I need panels of 8-9 mm thick, so re-sawing is a must, but I don’t relish doing that job by hand (and I don’t have a good hand saw for the job, either).

So the band saw. Its in my friend’s basement (he lives up the street). About this time last year, he brought me down to his workshop and stated that he wasn’t going to be doing woodworking anymore (he’s 75 and no longer interested in it). He was going to sell all his tools, but I could choose and have one free. I chose the band saw (Craftex 15”). I didn’t take it from him right away (garage is messy - no room) so its still in his basement. You don’t miss something that you’ve never had, so not having used the saw in the last year was no big deal. My friend doesn’t mind that it stays where it is either as its not in the way.

But this is now. I’ll need to re-saw my elm for the panels. The max cutting height of the saw is 6” as stock, which is not very much. Fortunately, they make an extension kit for this saw to raise it a further 4” to a max of 10”. Still not a lot, but enough for my panels anyway. I purchased the extension kit and we installed it yesterday (it includes one longer blade which is suitable for re-sawing).

So today, after selecting the elm board I want to use, I marked it off into the three pieces I’ll use for my panels, and cross cut those pieces. Each piece will have to yield two slabs as I need a total of six to make the panels.

In Japanese woodworking, book matching is seldom used. It is considered proper to use wood in the same orientation as it grows in the tree. So the outside of boards face out and grain patterns are set vertically whenever possible and exposing end grain is avoided (there are always exceptions; some forced by engineering, i.e., beams must be set horizontally, and sometimes by design, as sometimes it is more attractive to arrange the grain against its natural orientation - but rarely book matched). This displays a sensitivity and respect for the natural material for which the Japanese are famous (and extremely adept).

In my case, my panels will be comprised of three edge joined boards (each about 22 x 22 cm to make up a panel 22 x 62 cm when trimmed to size). The boards will have the grain run vertically and when re-sawn, rather than opened and joined like a book, the front/back pair will be separated like a deck of cards with the top “cards” forming the upper panel and the bottom “cards, the lower with the outsides all facing out. Confused? I’ll have a pic soon.

[Sheets]

Kumiko Splits

Well, more nice weather so once again I’m enjoying working outside. I work on a WorkMate, I work on low horses, I work outside on my deck. I think its a real asset not be tied to working on a bench. Of course, some work is not so portable. But when it is, its nice to just haul out a few hand tools and set up anywhere I like. I also finished sanding the other side of the door.

I haven’t started the re-sawing of the panels yet as I’m waiting for the wood to acclimatize to the drier conditions in the house. The last time I used some elm from the garage, it moved a lot once in the house - and after I’d cut and dimensioned it for a box. So this time I’ll give it longer before cutting it further.

I did, finally, cut the kumiko pieces and have been working on dimensioning them to near final proportions. I had some pine flooring left over, so used it to produce the 28 parts (8 verticals and 20 horizontals). I cut the floor boards at 13 mm widths, needing 12 mm as a final width for all the kumiko. But, because the floor boards were 19 mm thick, I needed to take them down to 12 mm. To reduce the thickness, I once again used my splitting gauge to slice off the excess. A good workout, but hard on arthritic thumbs.

The thing to remember when using a Japanese style marking guage, is always make the first mark very shallow. Otherwise the blade will follow the grain if it angles toward the fence (the fence will prevent the blade from being pulled the other way). After the first shallow mark is made, then you can deepen subsequent passes either to highlight your mark or to split the wood. If splitting, the resulting surface will not be flat. This is because the blade is wedge shaped and you are compressing the wood fibers as you force the blade deeper in the cut. After planing the surface flat, watch for some movement as the wood de-compresses; you may need to make another pass with the plane later.

After all the splitting and planing to dimension, I selected the best surfaces to face out (I prefer to have face grain showing, but with wood like pine which does not have a prominent grain, it wouldn’t look out of place to mix in edge grain exposure) and marked the kumiko in groups for the half lap joints. I used some of the previously cut frame parts to provide the references for the joints, ala baka-bo fashion. I used my trusty, nifty jig to cut the half laps on the horizontals and will complete the verticals tomorrow. After that it will be chiselling out the waste from the half laps and test fitting them together.

That’s it for this post. Thanks for reading.

Steve

[Sheets]

Last post was marking and cutting the shoulders of the kumiko half lap joints. Today was half lap day - chiselling out the waste in each of those joints plus the tenons on the kumiko ends (which are also half laps). In case anybody likes big numbers, that works out to 136 joints. And I thought I was bored drilling dowel holes. (Of course, work like Des does: https://www.woodworkforums.com/f40/as...ughter-111252/ would take the gold medal for large numbers of joints).

You may have noticed in the last post, the alternating arrangement of the joints. This is to weave the kumiko together and provide additional stiffness to the lattice which will help prevent any bowing over the length of the individual pieces. Probably not so important in my door as the glass will help the lattice keep its shape (at least in one plane), but traditional shoji have nothing but paper (usually only on one side) to help the kumiko stay flat.

I marked all the horizontals and verticals and matched them in groups. Its not that a particular piece couldn’t be flipped to match the joint of a crossing memeber, but since each piece has a front (the display face), matching everything prevents the backs from ending up out front.

To cut the tenons, I’m using a Nakaya rip dozuki (purchased from Tools From Japan). I only bought the blade and made the handle/spine out of some scrap walnut. This saw is made for delicate work, so doesn’t need anything beefy to hold the blade - the wood is fine. This particular saw has a ridiculously thin blade - so thin that the kerf easily fits in the width of a marking gauge or knife mark. So you basically mark the exact dimensions of your joint, cut on the line (provided its a thin line) and the joint will need no further cleaning up or paring to the line. Its a great saw for the price, even if purchased with the handle .

Next stage will be to trim the tenons to length as most are too long. Then tidy the kumiko and frame parts, and purchase and install the glass. I’m going to use screws on the frame parts that hold the kumiko so I don’t have to try nailing them on in close proximity to glass . Then I’ll tackle the re-sawing of the panels (I’m still new to the bandsaw, so need to cut some scrap to get accustomed to setting it up to cut accurately).

[Sheets]

I spent most of today tweaking some of the parts. Trimming tenon lengths, kumiko widths and mortice dimensions to dry fit all of the window frame parts except the horizontal kumiko.

So not too much to add since yesterday.

If you notice the edges of the door (knots and knot holes) and wonder how that looks anything but ugly - the door width as it is now is actually too wide for the opening. So, when trimmed to the correct width, these blemishes will knot be there.

'Til next time.

[NeilS]

.....these blemishes will knot be there.

'Knot' be there.....

.....

[Sheets]

Since last time, I’ve cleaned up the horizontal kumiko and glued them into the verticals. All that went pretty well - only a few tight joints and one which cracked, but I was able to glue and clamp the crack (after “kerfing” one edge to ease the fit). I dry assembled all the kumiko and frame parts except for the long vertical frame parts into which the horizontal kumiko tenons will fit. I don’t want to press these parts together until the final, permanent assembly as I think pulling them apart once fitted could be a problem and not really necessary.

I ordered and picked up the glass. Beforehand, I made sure that I measured twice and I even cut pieces of wood to the right lengths to ensure the measurements were correct. But somehow, as I was passing these dimensions over the phone to the glass place, I misquoted the width of the glass. Was it fate?, ESP?, or mere stupidity? Anyway, I said 14 5/8” wide instead of 14 7/8”. Why?

A smart man would replace the glass in the right size (eating the $65). But I, clever chap that I think I am, of course managed to salvage the day. I had a piece of broken window glass waiting to get thrown out with the trash (its been broken and awaiting disposal for quite some time - sometimes it pays to procrastinate) so was able to cut some filler pieces that will go on either side of the glass panes and make up the missing 1/4” (the fillers will be wider than this as there is excess space under the vertical frame pieces). I’ll use some clear silicone to glue the extra glass onto the main pieces. This will leave a seam, but the vertical frame pieces will just meet this seam and to the unsuspecting eye, will still see light passing through glass even if the filler pieces have no texture. I haven't included the shims in the pics of the glass since they're not attached yet.

As to the panels, I’ve been letting the elm acclimatize in the house and a good thing. They have cupped one way then the other as I’ve turned them over with stickers in between. There was some undulation in the board even before I cut the three pieces for which I was prepared to have to plane out on the one side that will be the reference for the bandsaw fence. I used a Makita 3 1/4” power planer to flatten the reference faces (could have done it by hand but there was as much as 6 mm to take off in some spots - a lot of work for a hand plane). The Makita is a good tool for removing wood fairly quickly, but isn’t really made to flatten wide surfaces, invariably leaving tracks along the edge of the cuts. But provided the depth is set fairly shallow, the tracks are not too deep and easier to plane out later.

So now I should be able to take the elm boards to the bandsaw and re-saw them into thinner pieces (and I can discard the remaining uneven face as waste). I’ll try to get that accomplished this week.

[Sheets]

About the band saw: sometimes what should be a step along the way ends up being an unseen and convoluted path.

You see, when I knew I had access to a band saw, re-sawing some elm seemed like an easy and reasonable step to make the panels and grow closer to finishing the door. And in most cases it would have been that straight forward. But there are a number of factors which have occurred to make the process drag out.

None of these factors are a total surprise, but when considering the likelyhood of any of them occurring, I perhaps put less weight on the odds than I should have. Nothing is lost or seriously derailled, so, I just have to take them in stride and accept the delay in getting things finished.

Anyway, here is what has happened:

1. The saw is new to me, so there is a learning curve. And even though the saw is not new to Ross, putting the extension kit on has put him in the position of not having any experience with the saw in this configuration, so he can’t help to the extent he would otherwise.

2. The saw is still in Ross' basement, so I can't use it whenever I want to, having to coordinate with Ross.

3. I have a very good book: “Band Saw Handbook” by Mark Duginske. I purchased this book in 1990 (there is an updated version now in print), anticipating that some day I would have a band saw. Needless to say, I have been re-reading it and refering often to the very necessary information in it (the manual which is provided with the saw is, shall we say, rather sparse). Without the book, I would be at a total loss to understand how to make the saw run correctly (as correctly as a consumer grade tool can) or how to diagnose the problems encountered.

4. So, while trying to learn the machine (I'm still not there) and make my panels, I ended up with less than optimal dimensions for the panels (too thick, which is fortunate, although I did ruin one by cutting it too thin when the blade wandered. I did have a spare piece from a previous project, so again, fortunate) which has forced me to spend much time trying to pare them down to thickness with the Makita power planer and hand planes. The power planer I use outside because of the dust and shavings, so have to wait ‘til the weather cooperates, and lately its not been, further slowing things down.

That’s where things stand as of today.

How's it going with you guys?

[NeilS]

That’s where things stand as of today.

How's it going with you guys?

Was starting to think that we hadn't heard from you for quite a bit Steve. So, just a dalliance with a bandsaw....

If you have managed to re-saw those panels without much prior experience you have done very well. And, I imagine you would have been using a relatively narrow blade on that bandsaw which makes it even more challenging.

As for me, I'm currently busy being a full time grandparent for a couple of weeks to my 3.5ry old grandson while his parents are in Europe. We are hoping that they will be returning on the weekend, volcanoes permitting.

Also working through a large shed full of green wood (English Oak, Silky Oak, Blackwood, Pear & Cypress) that needs to be pre-turned before it all splits on me.

.....