Screen Play (3)

This is part 3 of a build thread for a Japanese free-standing screen, or tsuitate. Previous installments can be located in the 'Blog Archive' section to the right of the page.

Once the template was drawn, I used my jigsaw to cut it out from the sheet of Baltic Birch ply. Then it was a matter of cleaning up the cut with my spokeshave and files. I use clamps to hold the template to my sawhorse in various ways for this step:


This is my favorite spokeshave:


Some positions were a little awkward to work on, so I had to get a little creative with how I worked the tool(s) and held the work at the same time:


This is the part where I, ahem, marched single file:


The template was now starting to look like something more than just an L-shaped blob:


A close up of the corner:


And here's the jog-up on portion of the template for the top beam, the katō-kyokusen ita:


As you can see, I'm going for quite minimal jog-ups on mine as compared to many seen on the Japanese examples shown in the previous post.

Here's the Honduran Mahogany blanks after two rounds of ripping, jointing and planing (spread 4 days apart to let the wood move in between if it wanted to):


The bottom piece in the pile is the source for the two vertical frame members. Notice the color contrast between the chair, also Honduran Mahogany, and the fresh material. it's good to know where the wood color is going over time.

In the next shot, you can see how I have roughly marked out the sections to be cut:


Twenty minutes work with my circular saw out in the yard and I had the pieces hacked out. The wood barely moved while it was being ripped, which was a very good sign and gentle on my saw:


The master template itself can probably use another going-over to massage out the edges as fair and smooth as I can get them, and I will also make some secondary templates from the master template. I also need to lay out the feet, and I am thinking of trying to obtain some drafting ellipse templates for the small ellipses involved rather than drawing them manually. I like drawing ellipses manually, but it will be quicker and easier to use a plastic template to draw from if I can obtain one locally.

In the meantime, I've completed design of the wedged locking joint I will use on the frame corners. Those will be fun to make and should be bombproof, so stay tuned.

Thanks for dropping by today. --> On to part 4