Thread: A Japanese timber framed garden shed

The two eave beams are finish planed, beveled, and have their dovetailed loose tenons fit along with their tapered wedges (wiggle fit only, not hammered home). Here is one. They are ready to be raised! 18 more posts and beams to go....

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I'm working on the combined header/upper track for the doors and window, called a komai. These are usually fit after the frame is up and are meant to be replaceable eventually as the sliding doors or windows wear them down. That presents a joinery challenge if you don't want to nail or screw them to the posts. One method is to use a stub tenon on one end and a sliding tenon on the other. I'm going to put sliding tenons on both ends. If it is a long span the komai is supported in the center by a post that hangs from an eave beam. The post is attached to the komai by a sliding dovetail.

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Here's mine:

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That sliding tenon is very cunning

Now I'm working fitting and finish planing the tie beams and their king posts. Here is one gable end set nearly done. I set the sash and sills on them to make sure I didn't make any gross layout mistakes. I think I might remake the two separate sills as one continuous sill that would tightly wrap the king post. That would eliminate the now odd looking (to me) gap between them. Looks like a place that might accumulate dirt and water and lead to rot.




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I've set up to test fit joints, starting with the roof components: tie beams, eave beams, king posts, ridge beams, and barge boards and rafters. Given that is now the dry and warm season here most of this will be done outside. Here is the fit of the cogged lap joints between the eave and tie beams. I had a friend stop by to help me set the beams and take them apart for small paring adjustments. I can lift one beam by myself but having another hand for taking taking them apart was so much easier. So far, so good.

I've set a date of 29 July for raising the frame. I'm recruiting a team of about a dozen others to help. Should be fun.

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Fitting the barge boards (hafu in Japanese) to the ends of the ridge beam and eave beams so that I can lay out the joinery on the backs. The camera angle and focal length makes it look asymmetric but it isn't. The two arms are, though, still about 125 mm longer than finished length.

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And here is a short video of how the joint between the two barge boards comes together and is locked (temporarily here) by its tapered wedge.

barge board joinery - YouTube

Got the joinery done for one of the barge board to eave beam and ridge beam connection. With one mistake.

The barge boards are joined to the eave beams with housed dovetails. The dovetails are on the ends of spline tenons that are drawn into the eave beams with tapered wedges. A lot going on here that has to line up vertically and horizontally.

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Here is one joint partially set in place.
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The ridge beam is similar but not housed. I messed up and cut the floating spline upside down. Perhaps not obvious to you because it sure wasn't to me. This way the barge board can't sit down level with the upper surface of the ridge beam. But not a big problem and easy to fix tomorrow by making another floating tenon.

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Still pecking away at it every day but nothing photo worthy. I have finished fitting all of the mortise and tenon joinery and most of the finish planing.

I'm getting pretty fast at planing and beveling edges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCp6h2dWoZM&feature=youtu.be

I'm now onto cutting a series of grooves for fitting wall panels and various door and window fittings. For this I'm using a tool new to me: a Makita groove cutter. These aren't sold in the USA market (too dangerous, apparently) but can be had from Japan. A little scary to use the first time but after awhile I got used to it. Here it is on some scrap cutting a groove 15 mm wide and 9 mm deep in one go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3xcinki-YE&feature=youtu.be

And here are some finished grooves on my posts. These are 18 mm wide, which meant I had to make two passes. 18 mm cutters are available but they aren't cheap and I was too miserly to spend the money for one job. A friend and I did about 30 meters of these grooves in a couple of hours. It was nice to have another set of eyes on it to make sure I was cutting the correct face and correct side.

Compared to a router, this groover is quieter and lower pitched, much better ergonomics, makes flakes instead of dust, doesn't tend to pull to one side, and has a lower center of gravity so less tippy. The motor is wired for 100V whereas our local voltage is 120 but reports were that it worked just fine though spins a bit faster. I guess the intermittent use of it saves the motor from overheating.

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17 days until the frame raising.

Frame raising tomorrow! Here is a "before" shot of the site. The plan is to assemble the lower frame (minus the roof beams) onto the boards that span the cribbing. Then remove the cribbing in steps to lower the frame onto the stones. Then top off with the roof beams. I think/hope we can get this done in one day.

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The weather will be sunny, clear and not too hot. Perfect. I have an enthusiastic amateur crew coming and plenty of food and drink for them.
I hope to have a time-lapse video of the assembly to share and plenty of stills.

Wish us luck!

It's now in 3D. The raising went as well as I could hope. No major glitches, just some minor tweaking of a couple of tenons and a lap joint. From start to finish it went up in 4 hours. No one got hurt, and the crew of 12 all seemed to have a grand time. Especially those who got to yield the big mallet.

I didn't get to take any process pictures but others did that I can share as I get them. And there is a time-lapse video compressed to 6.5 minutes:

Tea House - YouTube


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That's me up there mounting the ceremonial laurel bough onto the ridge beam.

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You would be justifiably pleased with that
I look forward to the next stage

Thanks, Ray. Here are a few joinery pics.

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I'm working on the barge board details. I added a stopped rebate to the lower edges and have almost finished the gegyo, or pendants. There are many designs for the pendants, some large and elaborately carved. Since this is a shed, I chose about the simplest design which is a hexagon within a hexagon and a central rod. I have left the rod a little long since I wasn't sure what would look best. I think I need to shorted it a bit.

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How it is assembled:

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And how I'm attaching it to the barge board. No metal fasteners.
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I suggest make the dowel project the same as the thickness of the small hexagon