On this page will be a series of links to various topic posts, or series of posts, which are not build threads. This list will be continually updated as new material is added, so please check back from time to time.
Sidling up to Sideboards (a continuation of the design discussion above, as I move away from looking to Japanese sources to Chinese ones)
This is the final post depicting the construction of an interior for the East Asian Language department at Colgate University in upstate New York. While this concludes my scope of work, additional plastering and painting are yet to come, and once these are done I’ll share ‘final’ pics here on the Carpentry Way.
The final push took place over a day and a half, with the first day being rather a long one. I work without breaks pretty much, barely stopping to even eat, so by the end of the day I am a bit strung out. I work like that more or less at the shop too, though I will occasionally take a lunch break.
Things went well. The tasks I looked after included:
There were a few minor tasks as well not worth enumerating (or which I have forgotten about already). It was a full slate of work for the time I had.
I didn’t take any ‘in-process’ pics, however Dr. Hirata, the department chair, took loads of video and photos, and at some future point there will be a video produced I’m sure. All I’ve got for now are some pictures of the space as I left it.
The first two are a panorama of the Japanese room:
On the left wall of the picture you can see the kake-shōji. It was supposed to be easy to hang, as I had purchased special fasteners from Lee Valley:
The installation instructions were simple enough: drill a 1/4″ hole in the wall, through the steel stud, and then use a #3 Phillips bit to drive the 1-Shot anchor right in. After that a wood screw can be driven in to the end of the fastener to hang whatever it is you want to hang. I followed the instructions, and when I tried to drive the anchor in, it got partway in and then the thread stripped out. I tried a second brand new fastener in the same hole, and the same result was obtained. I drilled the hole bigger. Same result. Drilled bigger yet. Same result. It simply would not work.
I suspect that the steel studs behind the wall at Colgate are significantly heavier duty than the ones pictured in the Lee Valley product page, but I have no way of knowing.
I had to go to a plan ‘B’, and it was 8:00 at night so there was no opportunity to run to the hardware store. I drilled pilot holes with some self-drilling drywall screws intended for metal studs, and then threaded in a couple of Tapcon anchor screws to those holes, fasteners which are otherwise designed for masonry walls. Those worked perfectly.
On the other wall, you can see the kake-shōji also hung, and that wall is concrete blocks behind the plaster board. Fortunately I had brought 4 of the Tapcon Screws with me, all of which had been slightly modified at my shop to fit in the concealed brass hanger cups epoxied into the backs of the kake-shōji frames:
It’s funny how seemingly minor things can suddenly become big time-consuming dramas sometimes.
An overview of the space through a professor’s office door:
Looking back the other way, showing the wainscot, door casings, and run of nageshi above that:
I suggested that at some point they may wish to consider replacing the doors with something (which I build) that goes better with the new woodwork.
Another view:
Another view:
Obviously the ceiling needs to be tidied up, and some painting work remains. However, some electrical work remains too, so that will be done in the near future and then the paint and plaster can be finished.
I’m pleased with the appearance of the new room, and especially like the shimmer of the figured avodire in view everywhere. There were loads of frustrations in terms of getting the new woodwork to fit against walls which were anything but flat or plumb, or which had square corners. While anything can be solved given enough time and scribing, etc., the constraints of the budget did not allow for this (it would have added at least a week to the job I’m sure) so in the end I simply did the best I could. The other alternative would have been to gut the rooms completely and fix the framing before applying new sheetrock, etc., however, again, budget constraint kept that out of the range of possibility. You have to cut your coat according to your cloth, as they used to say.
One bright spot to be sure was that the adhesive I brought this time actually lived up to its billing: Titebond’s Titegrab. There is none of it in New England for some unknown reason, so I had to obtain it from a Lowes down in Pennsylvania, and have it expedited up to me. An excellent product, though not without a certain learning curve.
All for this round, and all for this project. I hope you enjoyed the account of the build and installation.
If you wish to see the previous post in this thread, click here.
I’ve been so busy finishing up project work that I simply didn’t have the time to journey up to New Hampshire to get the sliding table and associated components back from the machinist Rees. They took it upon themselves to deliver it last week, which I consider fantastic service.
After my last trip to site to install, I came back to the shop and decided the first order of business, after I had put stuff away, would be to put the sliding table back on the saw. I figured this might take half a day. Hah!
I laid out the various fasteners that would be going back in place:
The sliding table’s support beam, which is made so it can be slid out and away from the saw blade, is locked in place by a pair of handles. On my saw, one of the factory handles was missing and a handle from a Robinson machine had been fitted instead. It worked fine, but the mismatched nature of it bugged me a little, so I took the opportunity, which working on this phase of the saw rebuild, to rectify the situation.
First off, I looked to see what might be available in terms of a replacement handle. That was nothing available from suppliers of Wadkin parts, which was but little surprise. In the aftermarket realm, I found via a UK distributor only one style of locking handle which would fit – and I didn’t care for the style.
The complicating factor in what otherwise would be a simple matter of replacing the handles is that most of the fasteners on this saw are in British Standard Whitworth (BSW), not UNC. In many sizes, the number of threads per inch between BSW and UNC is the same, and a UNC fastener can often be simply screwed into a hole threaded for BSW thread, especially if the hole is slightly worn. However when you get to the 1/2″ bolt size, the TPI is different, Whitworth having 12 TPI and UNC having 13.
If the handles were UNC it would be a simple affair, but they were not. However, the handles attached to the casting by way of double-ended threaded studs, and I found a threaded stud manufacturer in Britain who would custom-make me some threaded studs which had BSW threads on one end, and UNC on the other. Cost me about $40 for four of them, plus shipping.
Here are the new studs, with an original on the far right:
The studs threaded right into the BSW threaded holes on the casting:
Then, with a pair of UNC 1/2″x13 nuts locked on, I could seat the studs into place:
These bearing surfaces had been given 4 scraping passes by Rees.
Done:
Note the large pit in the casting right on a bearing surface. More on that below.
Here’s a picture showing, from top to bottom, the Wadkin handle, below that the Robinson handle, and below, their replacements, nice cast zinc Kipp ‘classic’ handles:
While some have said on a particular forum that late model Wadkin machines had very fine casting quality. I would beg to differ. While pits and voids are not all that unusual in sand castings, it is unfortunate to find such craters as these right on a cast bearing surface:
Prior to fitting the sliding table, I decided to level up my main table. A little overkill perhaps, to use the Starrett Master Precision level for such a task, but I tend to prefer to reduce uncertainties where I can:
Once the machine frame and thereby the main table was leveled, I could take a look at how the angle brackets sit, relative to that. Note that the set screws which are used to adjust the angle brackets have never been touched since I removed the brackets, and the position they gave the angle brackets is that which was also factory pinned:
The main table, by the way, is simply a large casting resting directly upon the cast frames four mounting points – it is not shimmed or anything like that so the relationship between the main table and the frame should be much the same as it was when the machine left the factory, save for any movement which might have unfolded in the machine base casting over time. I was somewhat surprised to find it was not especially well aligned to the main table.
The other angle bracket is similarly out of plane with the main table:
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:
b66de14dd0197b9c515daca958c3d513.jpg 750×1,000 pixelsSome progress has been made on the WordPress front. I’m still new to this site, having migrated here from Blogger a couple of months back, and still on the steep part of the learning curve it would appear. The sidebar I had installed with Paypal purchase buttons for material in the TAJCD series has been unaccountably missing and non-functional for the past month, but at last it is back and seems to be working as before.
WordPress, to their credit, acknowledged the problems I had been having, and along with decent technical support (something unavailable on Google’s Blogger platform), they just refunded all my money for two years of business membership on WordPress. And they will still provide me with full support going forward. Kudos to them!
I continue to work my way through old posts, cleaning up formatting errors and fixing post-to-post links so that it becomes possible to read through various build threads once again. I have just worked my way through the 87 posts which comprise the MFA Gate Build, titled ‘Gateway’, and that has now been added to the Thread Index. Additionally, I have added a permanent link to the sidebar for ‘Thread index’, which when clicked will take you to that page listing the threads which have been fixed up. I have a bunch of old threads still to go through and add, and hope to complete this work in the next month or two, adding new (old) threads as they get sorted.
Also planning to add a ‘Topic Index’ for those many posts here which are either very short series on a particular topic, or stand-along posts which may be related to one another, or not. Just trying to find good ways to make this site, with more than 1000 posts, more readily searchable and readable.
If, when reading an old post, you come across a link which does not work, language referring to things not present on the WordPress site, or odd formatting, please drop me a line and let me know about it.
Getting to the conclusion of the next to last week of fabrication for this project. Two principal items left are the shōji for behind the circular window in the alcove, and the sliding doors, ita-do, for below the alcove.
As a previous post detailed the construction of the two kake-shōji for the Japanese room, it would be redundant to go through the fabrication of the two shōji for behind the circular window in the same fashion. Nonetheless, I have a few pics to share.
After the frameworks are together, tenons are trimmed and some clean up done on the edges:
While the first frame is getting cleaned up, the second is getting clamped up:
Afterwards, a bit of attention is given to the faces of the frame as well:
I’m using mulberry paper, or kozo, on this set. Here’s one of the doors after the paper has been glued on:
A look at the joint between stile and rail, a haunched tenon with mitered coping;
After the paper was glued and left to set overnight, the next day the paper could be misted so as to tighten up any sags.
Here’s the pair of shōji then, just needing a little final planing along the meeting edge, which will be done after they are test fitted onto their sliding tracks in the next few days:
The parts for the lower sliding doors are well along:
Another half day of work should see them through to completion.
In the home stretch now, with delivery/install still planned for the 17th/18th of this month.
Next on the list were the two staggered shelves in the Japanese flanking alcove, or tokowaki. This illustration shows the arrangement:
I used some figured cherry for the shelf boards and followed the traditional proportioning rules of thumb for both shelf thickness and spacing. I worked closely with the EALL department head, a Japanese woman, to come to a mutually pleasing arrangement for the shelves.
Cutting a pair of boards for shelves is, on initial consideration, one of the simpler tasks a woodworker might find themselves faced with, however these shelves are a little trickier than they might otherwise appear.
In the Japanese context, alcoves are where some of the most refined woodwork in a building will be performed, and compared to the rest of the interior, materials of the best quality and with more refined joinery are employed.
The end of a solid wood shelf presents end grain, and this end grain is to be concealed. The way of doing that is to fit an asymmetrical double-dovetailed sliding key.
Here’s a look at the trench on one board after cutting was 99% completed:
You can see from this view that the lower portion of the trench has a smaller sliding dovetail than the flared opening.
A view from the other end:
One has to take considerable care in cut out not to damage the delicate arris all the way around the trench opening.
Here’s the trench completed on the other shelf:
Another view:
The double dovetail keys were fabricated with a combination of table saw work and milling machine work:
The picture above shows the key sticking out further than it will be when done, and shows the end which will be buried in the wall.
This is the viewed corner after the double-dovetailed sliding key is fitted, and, in case it was not obvious, the key going to be trimmed right back to the end of the board soon enough:
If the key were trimmed before final fitting, it would be rather difficult to remove. So, I leave it to protrude about 1/2″ for these initial steps, so it can be readily tapped out with a hammer.
The upper shelf has an additional piece which curls up, a component termed a fude-gaeshi. Originally these were fitted to table tops and shelves as a means of keeping scrolls from rolling off, however in recent times they have become more of an architectural ornament. It would be odd, for instance, to put a scroll on a staggered shelf.
I considered for a while making this piece out of another wood which complimented cherry, like avodire, or provided a darker accent, like mahogany, however in the end I went with cherry. My milling machine was most useful for a bunch of the cut out work, with lot of hand tool finishing required in the end.
The completed fude-gaeshi with three male sliding dovetails cut out of the same block, and the sliding dovetail tranches completed in the upper shelf:
You an also see in the above photo that the double-dovetail sliding key has been trimmed back. It’s kind of funny in a way, to fit a long-grain key to conceal end grain, as the net result looks an awful lot like like the shelf is plywood/particle board and has been edge-banded. The irony is not lost on me.
In the fude-gaeshi goes on its three sliding dovetails:
Then it slides along until the end of the piece is flush with the edge. I thought the fit came out nicely.
Here’s the shorter shelf after the end cap is fitted:
