Screen Play (9)

Moving right along with the build of a Japanese freestanding partition, or tsuitate as they are termed. Previous installments, if you need to catch up with this build thread, are found at the right of the page in the 'archive'.

Next step was to process the dadoes in the main frame members for the floating panel, which will be about 0.3125" wide:


Here's the separate rail for the bottom of the frame, now also dadoed for the floating panel.The rail will eventually be attached to the lower frame member (sitting below it) with sliding dovetail keys, and to the legs with some sort of partially-mitered dovetail joint (t.b.d.):


With the dadoes done, I started in on roughing out the mortises for the latticework. Since three parts of the frame are curvilinear, mortising is not quite so straightforward, so I made up a couple of jigs, one to fix the pieces, and one for the router:


To prevent any potential tear-out from the router messing up the dadoes, I inserted sacrificial strips into the grooves:


Then the routing could begin, a couple of plunges then a pass across:


As I am working in the kitchen, keeping things clean is important (at least to my wife!):


The rough mortises now completed in the two legs:


Another view:


Then, keeping the same fixing jig in place, I made up another jig to enable me to pare the mortises with a chisel while keeping in alignment to the mortises:


Let the paring begin:


The first couple of sets done - I'm only paring one wall of the mortises for the time being, and will use the actual grill bars later on to scribe fit each piece:


All for today, thanks for tuning in. --> Go to part 10