Screen Play (6)

Onward and upward. This is the 6th post in a build thread about a movable Japanese room partition, or tsuitate. Previous episodes are found in the Blog Archive to the right of this page.

With the leg tenons roughed out, I turned my attentions to the flickering flame top beam, or katō kyokusen ita. Once again, I began with a little sawing, with the now classic Sawing for Teens soundtrack blaring in the background:


Slicing and dicing now complete (it's amazing what you can do with a VitaMix™!):


A little trimming with my router followed, where I managed to get pretty close to my target dimension:


Next step was to trim the tenons down in width - I commenced with the leg tenons:


The leg tenons now diminished, but still, er, proud:


Here's the two legs, along with the top beam at the bottom, which has yet to have its tenons trimmed:


While the camera battery needed a recharge, I moved along, so there are a few stages I'll have to omit from the photographic record. So, shazam!, here is the next stage in the joint development;


The arrangement on the top beam is the mirror of the legs':


The other side:


A little messing about with a paring chisel ensued:


After a bit more trimming an clean-up the joint is starting to take shape:


The stub tenons are slightly fat still and need to have the lower abutment trimmed to a 45˚ angle.

Another view of the leg tenon arrangement - kind of like something out of Battlestar Galactica, eh?:


Just a teaser:


Finally, the three upper frame components are nearly there:


Next step with these joints is to process the mortises for the stub tenons, or mechi. Then the trench-ways for the wedge pins, or shachi sen, will be chopped out. Once I am able to lock the joints up, I can profile the legs and top beam to final form as a unit, though I have a few other tasks to deal with before that profiling takes place. Lots more fun ahead.

Thanks so much for your visit today! --> On to post 7