Thread: A Japanese timber framed garden shed

Two full days of work, mostly by a neighbor and friends since I'm a bit too old to be a roof monkey. But I was a champion go-fer and in a few sticky cases the decider. Ceiling boards are done.

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Originally Posted by GRadice

And the joinery for those perimeter frames where they meet at the ridge. The frames sit on, overlap a bit, and are screwed to the barge boards that I've already shown. According to the Japanese carpentry text I'm using as a guide the barge end frames have this odd joint which is not fixed by any wedges or pins but seems to mainly be used to align and register the frames on the two sides of the gable.

One thing I love about this text is that even though the text is in Japanese, which I can't read, the drawing are clear and measurements are proportional.

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And one set of my attempts.

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So, is 1 Shaku close enough to 1 foot for the carpentry work you are doing?
Or 1 Bu close enough to 1/8" for the joinery you are using?

It looks like the Japanese units of length are just about the same as the imperial system, but in decimal increments !?!?!!

Thanks for showing us the details of the various joints you are using in the process of building your "shed". Always interesting trying to work out how they actually "lock"!

Cheers
Yvan

You are correct that the shaku is close to an English foot, (1 shaku = 0.99409 ft) but divided into decimals. Not close enough to be interchangeable if you mean marking a mortise in shaku and its tenon in English. In my situation, I need to stick with English for the roof parts because my roofing materials are produced in feet/inches. But yes, overall this shed built with the shaku system would not be noticeably different in size from what I'vce done. I am using metric for all of the rest of the shed parts which has meant lots of conversions from English to metric and back.

As I mentioned, the Japanese joinery text that I like uses proportions. So a mortise will be 1/4 the width of the post it is in, for example. Or a tongue will be 1/3 the thickness of its board.

And I've installed two of the gable end lattices. I hope to get the other two installed tomorrow. I still need to add their trim pieces on the outside and eventually demountable screens inside to keep the bugs out.

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And the other two lattices today. I still need to add some small trim pieces but now, except for the roof cladding yet to come, you can see how the whole gable end will look.

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This end faces west. At sundown the low angle light makes it through the lattice. I was hoping it would look something like this, and it does!

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This is an experiment. I'm not a carpenter and I'm working for myself so I'm allowed to do weird stuff.

I want to attach some trim pieces to contain the gable lattices but I don't want to use metal screws or nails. One reason is esthetic. I'm not painting or caulking and I don't want screw or nail heads showing. I also really don't want the metal corrosion staining the wood. The other reason is that metal cools faster than wood and is a point of condensation in humid weather, which leads to rot. In old buildings often the degrade starts at nail holes for that reason. Or so I've been told. But the trim pieces are too small for wood joinery.

I'm trying bamboo nails.

I bought a package of 150 mm x 4 mm bamboo barbeque kebab skewers. I cut them into ~ 35 mm lengths. I cut off the tip of the skewers and used a pencil sharpener to taper the ends of the other pieces.

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Alas, I don't have metric drill bits. I found that decent substitutes are 5/32" or 9/64" Imperial bits. Drill and then tap in the nail. I chose to pare them flush. They are barely visible but not garish.

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There are some odd flag shaped trim bits where the rafters meet the middle of the eave beams. Those got a single bamboo nail.

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I have no idea how well this will work over time. But I reckon the stakes are low. If the pieces work loose with seasonal expansion and contraction, I or a future owner can probably shoot some metal nails in from the non-visible back side and set it right.

your on a winner with that one