Colgate EALL (18)

The last phase of construction for the Colgate University East Asian Language Lab (EALL) involved a pair of sliding doors to be fitted beneath the alcove in the Japanese room.

Since I had previously fabricated the tracks for these doors, I was able to fit the individual rails to the tracks as they were completed:

These sliding doors pair avodire panels with reclaimed Hinoki frames:

In this photo, you can see one is assembled and the other is getting close to completion:

All done and clamped up:

A little cleanup with a plane followed:

Tenon ends trimmed:

The lengths were left slightly long on these doors to allow final trimming at site.

The completed doors:

I do believe the two woods combine well together, and it will be interesting to see how they look after a few years, as they may well oxidize differently.

So, even with all the principle parts completed, there was a myriad of tasks to complete on a wide variety of components to get ready to go to site. I was flat out in my shop for the 10 days preceding the loading up for the trip out to Colgate.

Matt J., who had helped me previously with the MFA gate installation, as well as a Japanese ceiling install at a residence in Natick, MA, came along to help out. It was very good he did, and not just for the company:  I would otherwise have been out at site for a week at least.

In the two and a half days we spent at site, we managed to get it all done, save for a few minor details.

The cusped window, with framed glass panel and sliding picture frame behind, was installed in the framed bump-out in the Chinese room:

I like their choice of paint color and tile for that room.

The lattice window insert was fitted to the window in that same room:

Hard to take a photo of a window with light coming in, at least with my nascent photography skills.

Completing the Chinese room had taken a little more than half a day. During that time I had set Matt to work on the wainscot for the Japanese room, and that work ended up being his focus for the entire time we were there.

We had intended to use a quick-acting construction adhesive to apply the wainscot to the walls, however the product I selected, Loctite ‘Power Grab’ Express All-Purpose adhesive with claimed ‘0 second’ bond time, proved to be completely worthless. The stuff is a cruel joke. Despite near idea conditions of a clean substrate and material which glues readily, temps in the 70s, moderate humidity, etc.,the Loctite product just wouldn’t bond anything to anything, regardless of how long the parts stayed in contact. Stuff left overnight would simply fall off once the tape was pulled. ‘Power Grab’ they call it [gag].

I like and trust Loctite’s threadlocking products, but this is the second adhesive product of theirs I have used which did not impress, so I think I’ll steer clear of their adhesive offerings from here on out.

I spent two hours today trying to obtain an alternate adhesive, which had been the preferred choice from the very beginning but seems to be unavailable generally in New England, namely Titebond’s Titegrab adhesive. today, with the help of a customer service person at Lowe’s headquarters, I managed to source some tubes of that product from all the way down in Pennsylvania, which is shipped expedited to me and I should have it in hand in a couple of days. Hopefully it will perform as advertised. I’ll let y’all know.

I spent most of my site time working on installing the alcove, or tokonoma, in the Japanese room. In the following picture, you can see that the left corner plant-on post is in place, along with the framing for the toko-waki section, or flanking alcove:

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