Battari Shōgi 12

An even dozen posts so far in this build thread, covering the construction and installation of a fold-up bench for an old Japanese merchant's house, or machi-ya. If this is your first visit, or you haven't dropped by in a few days, please check the 'Blog Archive' to the right of the page for previous posts on this topic (and other matters!).

It was time to conclude the work on the cross-pieces. First, the outer set of cross members needed to have housings cut in them to receive the Lignum Vitae hinge pieces:


I later decided to deepen the housing on the face (the tenon entry side) another 0.125", bringing it to a depth of 0.25". This gives better support for the hinge piece.

Time for a run with the Ichihiro 70mm:


Short shavings were all I could produce from the Wenge, especially on the tangential faces. It finishes pretty well off the plane I thought:


Note the light brown areas in the grain pattern - this is some sort of very soft growth, possibly akin to the earlywood which is characteristic of softwoods, though I suspect that Wenge is a dry-season deciduous.

Once the six cross-pieces were cleaned up, with a few re-sharpenings en-route, I could move on to checking their fit at the tenon ends:


Here's the little piggies, all lined up in a row:


Seemed like the time to do a trial assembly of the whole frame:


Holy crow, total blunder on these tenons! Look at the massive gaps at the sides:


Just kidding! - the tenons will be double-wedged later, and the mortises are already flared out on the front face of the rail for that purpose. Still, sometimes I forget such things and upon first assembly can jump to the conclusion that something is seriously amiss, then, 'whew!' I mutter under my breath as I realize it is only my imagination.

Next, on to the short side rails for the 0.75" square mortises which receive the Lignum Vitae hinge pieces:


Once chopped, I check the fit of the hinge piece tenons:


And next I check the cross-piece mortise as well:


The hinge piece needs a little scraping work yet to clean it up (now, it may look laminated, but those lines on the surface are just from the rough router shaping):


A tight fit, but it goes through, so let's see how the whole assembly looks:


I have yet to do some final shaping to the hinge piece, as far as the lower portion of it goes - I can mull the decision over for a day or two before bringing the chisels out.

More to come tomorrow - thanks for your visit to the Carpentry Way. Post 13 next.