Keyaki, (“zelkova”) is a member of the elm family and grows well in Kochi. When quartersawn, it has some of the same visual properties of oak. It’s prone to chipping and tearout, but worked carefully, it’s a rich, obedient wood that finishes up like a jewel.
I am courting a relationship with a local sawyer who runs a small mill not 30 minutes drive from our home. While he cuts a variety of hardwoods, his specialty is keyaki, and he ships large timbers around the country for use in temple maintenance and repair. But he also seems happy to deal with me and my piddly little requests. A couple of months ago, I took him a sketch of a free standing book cabinet I’ve designed for Mika. I wanted wood with grain that had a strong linear look. I was willing to consider any variety of wood, even cypress, but he took one look at my sketch and led me directly to a couple of boards. Beautiful!
They’ve been sitting stickered in my shop since then, not so much for acclimatizing to my shop but because I’ve been way too busy to give them any attention. Last weekend, though, was a three-dayer which coincided with the end of our rainy season. Off to work I went.
The boards tapered in thickness between 5 ~ 2 cm and are about 27 cm wide. Too wide for re-sawing on the bandsaw, and with my thickness planer out of action for who knows how long, I set to with a trusty trio of German scrub plane, Australian try plane, and Chinese knock-off no. 3. Hard, sweaty work, liters upon liters of sports drink, and rivers of chips and shavings flowing out of the planes.
My first serious commitment to working by hand was to purchase this No. 9 Miter Plane from Lie-Nielsen. The point of such a plane is to use it to “shoot” pieces of wood, truing edges with a plane registered against a straight edge. Getting true 90′s and 45′s by hand might at first, seem counter-intuitive–that’s what machines are for, idnit? But while machines can cut true and quick (provided everything is set up perfectly), they’re dangerous, noisy, dusty and generally unpleasant contraptions to dance with. Doing the same work by hand is slower, no doubt, but this also ensures that mistakes are smaller. Plus, it’s nice to be able to hear the ipod.
This was my first time to purchase a tool from Lie-Nielsen. That these folks are a different sort of company came clear after I put my order in online. I got an email telling me that they were just getting ready to do a run of miter planes and they’d let me know when they shipped.
Oh. This ain’t like ordering a Big Mac tool from Robot Tool Works. These folks are real craftsmen. I see.
Took almost 5 weeks to get the plane and had to wait till the weekend to play with it. The first thing I did was to build a shooting board from the pdf directions I downloaded from the Lie-Nielsen site. That took a few hours just to make sure everything was as right as it could be: 90′s and 45′s galore. Nothing’s perfect, I suppose, but this shooting board and attachments are damn close.
Put it to work on a couple of small boxes I’m building for my sister-in-law. They’re joined with keyed miter joints–a simple, but pretty effect on such small work. I’d done a few of them before using the router table to cut the 45′s, but the bird house jig made doing it by hand almost as quick and with much more control. Sweet! Davey likes.
It was always my job to say grace. “Dear Heavenly Father,” I began. Something made me look over at the strange old woman. Her head was turned away from the table. “We thank you for the blessings…” And the words died in my mouth. The room fell quiet. After a moment or two, Pop sort of coughed an “Amen” and my mother began to serve everyone. Continue reading →
Just received “The Maker’s Maker”, a DVD I purchased about the legendary English woodworker, Alan Peters. I bought the extended directors cut which, it seems, is intended for woodworking schools and libraries. Most interesting, to me, was an interview with one of his clients who knew what she wanted, damnit, and didn’t care how long it took to fill the order for an office full of furniture. Lucky lady.
I recently realized that I don’t have many interior shots of the house and today–given The Deluge-like rain–seemed like a good time to wander around and shoot some photos. Here they/we are, such as we are.
Lord, I miss her.
After all these years, why should it be so?
I cannot tell you.
I was 8, and corn simple,
When, at 83, she stepped back into a life
She could not have imagined
With people who would have fed her
Cold oats and rainwater
Made her sleep on stones.
There’s no getting around it: this house is its own little ecosystem apart from and despite the official residents. There’s the seed-bearing weeds that grow in the mud of the tile roof; the takaashikumo, (Heteropoda venatoria) the Japanese variant of the Huntsman Spider, with its quick and alien triangular body; its prey, the various and sundry visitors from the phylum Arthropoda that wander though; the meter long aodaisho, Japanese rat snake, that roams the garden and the crawlspace; the cute little round faced feral ghost of a kitty that lives in the eaves and walls and show up from time to time… But until the other day, I had no idea we actually had rats in the kura basement. Or at least one.
Betty began making an eerie mewling and sniffing at the door to the basement in the kitchen. Mika let her down and switched on the lights. We stood at the top of the steps peering down, content to let our wild girl from Yusuhara handle things. Betty disappeared and there were sounds of her poking about the hoes and rakes left down there from grandpa’s day. Scufflings. Skitterings. Then Betty’s tail in full fluff. And then something… a bit smaller than Betty, a bit darker than her, shot across the lit square of basement floor and vanished behind some plastic buckets and was gone.
Betty spent the next several hours down there pacing, poking in the corners but to no avail. Whatever it was–and it was a rat, surely–escaped through one of what must be countless vermin routes into the old granary. How could there not be scores of unseen largish critters roaming through this old house? And I’m not even thinking about the teeny tiny critters that must make up the overwhelming dominant populations here. No, this is a little world unto itself with generations of inhabitant species, only one of which pays the property taxes.
And you know what? It’s okay. I’ve fully gotten over my suburban middle-class phobia of critters. I’m not particularly fond of cockroaches, but I no longer feel physical revulsion. And I know the takaashikumo are simply freaky, but not particularly dangerous to a huge meat bag like me. I have no love for the clan mosquito, but since we’ve taken to sleeping under the kaiya, we’re cool.
We inherited this splendid garden, and though we’ve lived here more than a year, I still feel I’m just getting to know it. The design decisions were made long ago by other people, and taken all together, they serve as a kind of gardening lecture. I’m still a newby, but I really do enjoy spending time learning to take care of this beautiful space.
Last night the storm drove ‘cross the Sound and rain
Blew through the seams into the crowded tent.
We tried to huddle-sleep, all soaked again, but
Martine is coughing, hard. All sleeping went
When Julie left at 3. I wish she’d stayed.
She said we smelled like mold. Like socks. Like ass.
Like us she’s mostly hungry and afraid
Till first bell rings and we can go to class.
