Thread: A Japanese timber framed garden shed

Yes, the shed is just an excuse to do the joinery. If I get a functioning shed out of it, that will be a bonus.

I'm working now on the nuki, which are horizontal boards joined between the posts. There will be six of them at about 2m, three at about 9m, and two at about 1m, all with half dovetails on each end. Here are some of the 2m boards. Just a saw cut on the vertical. I chose to chisel and pare the slopes.

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I think I showed this before but if not, here is the post mortise with a test tenon to show how these will be wedged in place on assembly. I've cut all but one pair to have the wedge on the upper surface, but one of them will be placed upside down from that. It works both ways.

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Restacked the timbers today to get ready for the next steps. These have to be outdoors because I don't have other space inside, but under canopy and tarps and off the ground. The view before it all was buttoned up.
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Sneak peek at my roof-in-a-box which was delivered at the end of the day. Unfortunately too late to unload and store today.

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I sincerely hope that the terne (tin coated stainless steel) panels are in there, and not, as my neighbor suspected, a corpse.

Nope, not a corpse. About 14 meters squared of terne roof panels, plus drip edges and ridge cap.

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I started milling the Port Orford cedar boards for the jambs for the sliding doors. I was advised to get clear and straight wood to avoid warping that could bind the door travel. I spent extra to get these and I'm glad I did. These are jointed on two adjacent surfaces to prepare for ripping and planing. Wonderful stock so I sure hope I don't screw this up.

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Still plugging away but nothing exciting. I've milled stock for the rafters working it down slowly to adjust for wood movement. The target cross section is 50mm x 65 mm and these are still a couple of mm over that both ways. Next up are the floor joists at near the same dimensions. These might seem small but they will be on 300 mm centers and only ~1 m spans.

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I'm also fussing about the door and window designs. My first idea was to have glass in the doors for extra light in the shed, then no glass since the shed is mostly for storage, then back to glass since I didn't like the look of solid wood doors. I won't show all the variations I considered but here I am now:
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Happy New Year, all. Got the rafters dimensioned except for length. Floor joists, too. But no joinery on those until the frame is up in...June?

Now on to the barge boards/barge rafters/hafu. I have them dimensioned, too (130 x 50) except for length. They are beautiful boards. I did the layout for the joinery at the peak today and hope to start cutting wood tomorrow.

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I've also been fussing over a lock system for the two sliding bypass doors and would welcome any advice. It needs to be locked only from the outside. I'm thinking about a single plunge lock in the center stiles that would lock the doors to each other rather than mortice locks on the sides to lock the doors to the posts. Similar to what I think is going on in Toshio Odate's studio doors. But I'm open to other solutions.

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Layed out the barge board joinery yesterday and today. Sometimes using the metric Japanese framing square and sometimes using a Japanese square set to Imperial (avert your eyes!). The roof slope is 4.5/10.

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Some of the layout, with a few mistaken lines still to erase. I've learned the hard way not to leave those stray lines.

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Happy new year to you too. Thanks a lot for showing your work it’s such a pleasure to watch.

Yes, it is an interesting world when some old guy in a small town in the northwest of the USA decides to build a Japanese timber framed structure, posts a few pictures online, and a guy in some town in Australia follows along. I'm glad I live today.

Here are a few pix of cutting out one set of barge board joints. I will admit I made a couple of layout mistakes, none fatal, but ego-bruising. I can correct on the other set of boards.

1. The joint is asymmetrical which adds to the difficulty. Here is the left hand board viewed from the back side. I first cut to a line at the end of what will be a tongue. I clamped on a saw guide, not really necessary since this surface won't be seen.

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2. Then layed out the end grain lines for the tongue and sawed the shoulder and cheek on one side.

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3. Then sawed and chiseled the waste on the other side. The inside angle meant I could not do it with saw alone.

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4. Then I used a router and some supporting boards to level the deck of the large tenon since the sawn surface, with my skills anyway, is not level enough. One could use a router for the whole job but I hate the noise and mess. One could use planes and chisels alone for this but a router is much faster. I compromised.
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5. Then chisel out a groove for the tongue that will be made on the mating board.

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6. The mating board is simpler since there is no internal angle but the process is much the same. Saw, level, chisel out a groove for the matching tongue.

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Then make any adjustments needed to get the miter to fit tight. The assembly looks huge here in my garage. Each board is a bit longer than 2 m and they barely fit on my bench. It took all day today to get it (mostly) right.

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Not much to add except that Willa is now a bit over 7 months old. Here she is this week in a nearby winter meadow. She is getting a little better behaved every day.

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Originally Posted by GRadice

Not much to add except that Willa is now a bit over 7 months old. Here she is this week in a nearby winter meadow. She is getting a little better behaved every day.

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I’ll give her 18 months to 2 years before her heads sorted out and 4 to 5 years to really settle in. She looks smart, love them!

Yep, a puppy is a project for sure. This is our fourth golden and they have all been pretty trainable. I've become a better trainer, too. Much more patient.

Got the barge board mitres finally sorted out. Still a little cleanup planing to do, and they aren't perfect on the non-show side, but they are functional and look good on the show side.

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After getting a fit I liked I had a moment of panic that maybe I got the slope wrong, so I dug out my Pythagorean theorem and checked the lengths of the sides of the triangles. The base of the triangle is the distance from the center of the tie beam to the eave beam. In my case 3 ft or 914.4 mm. The slope should be 4.5/10 or 24.227. At that slope the hypotenuse (length from the midline to the eave beam centerline (centreline?) along the barge board should be 1002.2 mm.

So I layed out lines on the barge boards 1002.2 mm from the mitre. Then got out my story stick with centerlines marked every 914.4 mm. If I got the angle of the mitre correct, those story stick lines should line up with my hypotenuse lines. And they did! Thanks, Pythagoras!

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The mitre still has about a 0.5 mm gap that should close up fine when I tap in the locking key.
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Good place to quit for the day.

I'm back to thinking about the door and window designs. Fortunately I have the rough dimensions set by the frame. The rest is esthetics.

Since I don't know much about Japanese door and window designs I've been scouring the internet for ideas. I came across this wonderful site of Japanese antiques that specializes in "fittings," doors, windows, and transoms.

Japanese Antiques Shop Nobiru｜時代家具 アンティーク 蔵戸 古民具 古材 骨董品店「のびる」

Their galleries have hundreds of detailed images, mostly of pieces from the 20th century but some from earlier. I figured out a way to import pix from their site into iPhoto, change to B&W, import into Sketchup, and resize and duplicate to fit my drawing. Sketchup will snap the imported image to your drawing. Magic.

Here is one example. An imported image converted to B&W in iPhoto:

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Then imported to Sketchup, snapped to the face of my shed, rescaled, and duplicated:

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The method isn't perfect since rescaling changes the door proportions but it does give a quick look at what might work and what might not. Here is a workspace with several options I've recently swapped in and out.

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Sills for the transom and gable end sash. I used a jointer for the rebates and long bevel. Short bevel and cleanup with planes. Here is one.

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