Weekend progress

 

Renee, being the hard working girl that she is, has a "real" job that occupies here throughout the week, has her crunching numbers, strings of crazy long gene sequences AND teaching a class and students as well. Thank god she can relax and take things easy on the weekend.

 

 

Renee is also like a little excavator in human form, and I don't know where she finds the energy (She's nuclear powered, I suspect).

 

On Saturday, she had a vision, then promptly started to make it real.

 

 

Or maybe she just couldn't stop digging. The woman is, seriously, just a digging maniac. Ellie is searching for leaves, and the neighbors dog is searching for Ellie.

 

We've got soil in abundance, lying all rich, loose and crumbly atop the lava. The Aluhe ferns that were here before, blanketed the area with leaves and other decomposing matter for the last few hundred years, eventually producing this wonderful soil. Soil is truly an amazing resource, something that too many of us take for granted, but not us. We are conserving every bit that we can. After living here for nearly a year, we have seen just how rare this type of earth is. More common is to have the barest skin of dirt lying on top of large sheets of lava. This is the first place that we've been where you can actually use a shovel.

 

It is common here to ask, "How is your land? Is there soil?"

 

 

Ellie has been making birds from various leaves found in the forest. This one must be a cardinal, judging from the crest on its head (the next step will be working on camera focus :-)

 

 

Our baby cardinal friend lives here somewhere, and it's my hope that if we would start laying out some food, we'd see him again. None of the cardinals are about, so there must be some better food elsewhere.

 

 

Dogs and dirt.....what's the attraction?

 

 

I'd say that she is hunting up a gopher, but I'm pretty sure that we don't have them here in Hawaii, certainly not on this side of the island. She's just loving the dirt, digging and helping out.

 

 

This is the place on Sunday.

 

 

She dug out a big pocket of soil, separated out the jumbled chunks of lava, then layed a solid base for a parking area. She's a monster.

 

 

This entire island we live on, soil, trees, food, animals, everything that we know and see every day....it's just a skin atop rock. Everywhere, the entire world is like that, but it's something that we've forgotten, most places. This miniscule layer is all that we have, that gives us life and sustains us. The big island of Hawaii is new, geologically speaking, and here we are reminded constantly that life is a short and wonderful thing.

 

The soil is life, and the lava underneath is the origin, the beginning. These volcanoes erupt continually, lava breaking free onto the surface and covering everything, then quieting down again for 10 years...100 years.... 1,000 years....

 

When the lava flows, it often covers, but doesn't always scour the earth. It buries. So what we are seeing as we dig our little garden bed, is evidence of a millenia of events. The lava comes, then life gradually colonizes. The native Ohia trees are some of the first to return, having evolved to be able to live in thin soil, putting out thin strands and clumps of aerial roots to aid them in obtaining the water they need, water from the air itself. Eventually you get a mature Ohia forest, which is what we have now. Then the lava returns, covers it all, and the cycle begins again.

 

Our little garden is thin lava, broken by time, atop more lava which is also broken, atop probably more lava. There have been many different lava flows here, and there will be more.....probably. The island is still moving, and as it drifts further from the thin spot on the Earth's mantle that caused the island to form in the first place, the island will cease to grow.

 

Anyways......dirt and rocks. Lots of dirt. Renee is in heaven.

 

 

She has exposed two ridges of lava, and right down the center, she is seeing in her mind a waterfall cascade of steps, the early stages of which you can see here, from the side.

 

 

 

 

The broken lava is an absolute joy to work with, coming in a wealth of different shapes, many flat surfaces, and some with square corners.

 

 

If you've done rock work before, you know that square corners are like gold, something to be saved and hoarded for the future. The rock above isn't a corner per se, but is even more unusual, shaped like an inverted "L". It's also blue in color. Renee is using blue and silver stones for the steps, placing the red and gray rock elsewhere.

 

 

And up above, she planted some Okinawan sweet potato runners.

 

 

This is a new favorite of mine, though I've never been a fan of sweet potatoes. This plant is gardener's ease personified, just drop it on the ground, place a few handfuls of dirt here and there on the runner stem and that's it. It will soon grow and spread everywhere that you let it, and it also works well as a cover crop/living mulch. The young greens and shoots are eaten steamed, and taste somewhat similar to spinach, minus that uncomfortable oxalic acid feel in the mouth. VERY tasty, both the greens and the purple fleshed tuber.

 

Part of being a good gardener (which I am emphatically NOT), is knowing what grows where. This is a new climate, and to be rigid in our thinking and demand that all of our old favorites be grown in the garden, well, that's just absurd. Normal potatoes, lettuce, tomatos, peas....there is a long list of what doesn't like to grow here, primarily due to the high rainfall. There is an entire new world of plants that DO love it here though, and "right living" comes from that understanding. Effect change where you can.....don't try change the plants (because they won't listen), change your diet instead.

 

 

 

I have a different set of time constraints than my wife, so I get to work on the new place most every day. I start out as I usually do, by clearing the building site of undergrowth, then piling materials dead in the middle where they are guaranteed to be underfoot, whether I need them or not.

 

 

I ran a stringline around a rough perimeter going from tree to tree at an arbitrary height above grade. The slope right here is about 1/10 and, where the patch of ground that Renee has been working has lots of soil, this spot has essentially none. That's why I chose it. It's a horrible spot to grow things. Keep life where it is most happy.

 

 

Raise the camera a bit, and the strings come into alignment.

 

 

The lines are level, but the camera is not.

 

 

 

Some of you might recognize some joinery here.

 

 

 

 

So honest to God, I drive myself crazy. This is supposed to be a simple elevated platform, a level surface from which to work, and a basic tin roof. I'm not even planning for walls. 80% of the materials are ugly and salvaged and I'm planning on using guava sticks for the roof members. A long service life is not a consideration, and take-apart modular is a minor design theme. I finally caved and bought a screwgun, so screws are here, nails are here, and I should just bang this out, right?

 

To all of you who know me.....I can hear you. Yeah, right, sure.

 

It starts with a simple splice......

 

This lumberyard 2x6 would feel so much nicer in the hand if it were planed....

 

Height above grade will be over 36" at the most likely side of approach, so maybe if the nicer sticks were used on that side, maybe introduce some curved elements......

 

And so it goes. I can't help myself. People kindly (and sometimes NOT so kindly, haha) call me a perfectionist, but it's not true. I'm an incrementalist. Perfection is an illusion that can never be attained, but nearly everything can be made just *sliiigghtly* better.

 

Naturally, this drives others crazy too.

 

 

 

I chose a site with a minimum of existing growth because I don't want to disturb the area any more than necessary but, because the guava is:

• A) Considered a pernicious invasive that everyone wants to kill anyway, and....
• B) is also a lively and resilient growing machine, that....

..... I start envisioning using the few existing trees as the foundation posts of the structure and extending up to serve as supports for the roof as well. These things are so tough, that I fully expect them to bounce right back, sending out new lateral growth, despite being viciously "topped". And if they die.....well, I was going to cut them down anyway.

 

But what if they DO live? Wouldn't it be cool if the structure was as "alive" as possible? Not only is the guava a vigorous and hardy tree, it's also enthusiastically innosuculate, meaning that it is self-grafting. If you want to weave a living wall, there would be few better choices of plant to begin with.

 

In any event, while I entertain grand thoughts, I also rig a tarp overhead, to keep the tools dry.

 

 

The sumi ink that I'm using for layout works great on damp lumber, but if the stick is actually wet, the ink just runs and bleeds. If I swipe the area with a rag, then lay down a very fine line, the ink will set enough to hold, but it's not the same as say, marking on dry wood. FYI, for those of you working in the rain. Fresh cut green wood, no problem. Compared to pencil, there still is no comparison. A pencil only works well on dry lumber, and it's been nearly 6 months since I've touched one for carpentry. I used one the other day...for about 2 seconds. How the hell do you cut to such a fat f***ing line, haha?!

 

 

 

I also built a new sharpening station.

 

 

Haha.....nice, huh?! I miss using good stones though. My standards are currently low.

 

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Japanese woodworking books....."Japanese Joinery"

 

"Japanese Joinery" by Yasuo Nakahara

 

 

 

 

 

As we know, there's not that many informational works on the actual practice of Japanese carpentry. Of the few commonly available and referenced books, this is the only one that I would recommend unreservedly. "The Japanese House" by Engel (my other fav) is a fantastic scholarly exploration of old house construction, but it's not a book that I would recommend to a person who just wants to build in the Japanese style. If you want to actually practice carpentry in the Japanese tradition, this is your book....or a beginning at least.

 

"Japanese Joinery" is was published in Japan in 1967 as an educational manual for carpenters (I believe), then translated and released for American audiences in 1983. The American edition has a humble (and humbling!) forward, written by the Eastwind company's Len Brackett. Mr Brackett writes a bit about his own apprenticeship that he served in Japan, saying that the five years of 70-80 hours per week were said to be adequate for a decent foundation of knowledge and skill. A foundation, mind you. When I take half the day, putzing around with one of our simple Project Mayhem joints, this is the type of thing that I keep in mind.

 

I am attracted to this type of work for many reasons, but one of the things that most makes me ache is the intensity of the work, how fully involved these guys are while getting the job done. When laying out the joint, you plant the corner right where you need it to be, place the sashigane just-so, then dip the bamboo pen in the ink pot, get the angle of the pen, aim and....finally.....strike the line. Then swiftly on to marking the next line, about 10x faster than my awkward and wordy explanation can describe. This concentration and skill comes with practice, and that requires time. And knowledge. I'm talking myself in circles here, I know, but this book will give you a bit of the knowledge. The time part is on you.

 

It's not perfect. Even with my limited knowledge, I've seen a number of errors ( errors of illustration, and some of the descriptions don't seem to match quite right) so you need to think as you are studying, work the process through in your mind.

 

But.

 

But!

 

It's a great start. It's almost entirely descriptive illustrations, and the text blocks are important as well. I found little gems hidden all over. Here are a few.

 

 

 

 

 

We start out with the perennial favorite, the Kama tsugi half-lapped goose-neck joint.

 

 

This was our second Project Mayhem joint, and all that thinking/staring/guessing that I invested.....it's all right here. Lines, proportions, tips on getting the angles correct. It also shows that the goose-neck is cut with a sloped shoulder, something that the other guys were aware of, but not me, haha. These few pages would've helped me cut a better joint in half the time.

 

 

 

A couple of pages later, we've got Shachi-tsugi (a type of wedged tenon joint) and Shachi-sen (the wedge itself).

 

 

Project Mayhem #3 used both of these devices and if you read the comments on my blog back then, you might remember me getting all in a tizzy about some aspects of the shachi-sen, the wedge itself. It had been mysteriously alluded to elsewhere that the shachi-sen was to be tapered in two directions, but after some discussion we decided that was nonsense. The wedge can taper, as can the walls of the mortice. Combine both.....even better. But that's not the same thing as being a compound taper, you know? Well, we were correct! It's all right here.

 

 

And at page 45 we have the exact joint in question, Project Mayhem #3, the Yatoi hozo mortice and tenon.

 

 

 

 

 

As was shown in this books sister publication "Japanese Woodworking", the use of metal fasteners and reinforcements are now commonly used in modern construction.

 

 

This is not a book for the purist aesthete maybe, but it generally shows multiple ways of doing things, sort of a hierarchy of quality. This is good, this is better, this is for the finest work....that sort of thing.

 

 

 

Probably the most valuable part of the book is chapter 4, how to layout joinery that will fit together, even when using non-square timber.

 

 

This chapter shows a handful of tips, simple stuff superficially, but this is how you get things to fit together as they should.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diagonal bracing. It does exist.

 

 

 

 

Here is more diagonal bracing.

 

What's interesting to me is that the joinery is so rudimentary. In "The Japanese House", Engel noted a distinct lack of diagonal bracing being used in traditional Japanese house construction. Now it is a commonplace standard, although you might not be able to find many elegant examples for inspiration. These are all tacked together using metal strap.

 

 

 

Mud wall construction! Great information on another obscure topic, one that I intend to use in some of my own work.

 

 

There is very helpful info on spacing, keying the mud into the timber, and how to detail the timber boundary so that the division between earth and wood has the cleanest finish.

 

 

 

And more diagonals. And more tie straps.

 

 

 

 

Here's how that funky 4-way joint gets used in actual construction.

 

 

Different versions too.

 

 

 

And up to the roof structure.

 

 

 

 

Lots of non-square framing up here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hip roof framing.

 

 

You can't avoid the hip roof if your studying this stuff, it's the iconic Japanese roof. Here in Hawaii, probably 80% of the roofs are hips and I don't think it's a coincidence.

 

 

 

The complex joinery at the corner, right where the hip rafter meets the uppermost wall beam/top plate. Nakahara offers a good, then a better option for joinery.

 

 

I want to try cutting this joint. Maybe Project Mayhem #10?

 

 

 

Here's a great jig for drawing proportional lines, followed by two options for using joinery at the gable roof ends.....

 

 

......followed by the quick and dirty, modern expedient solution, a length of threaded rod, haha.

 

 

 

Some classic and beautiful, some efficient and not so beautiful, but there is a lot here, over 200 pages of good stuff. There is much food for thought in this book.

 

 

Both "Japanese Joinery" and "Japanese Woodworking" are out of print, but they have been combined and re-released as "The Complete Japanese Joinery". Amazon has it, and I'd say it's a bargain. That said, if you are tight on space on your bookshelf, just get this one. It's good.

 

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More books....."Japanese Woodworking"

"Japanese woodworking" by Hideo Sato

This book was originally published in Japan in 1967, but was translated into English for this 1987 publication. The book is now out of print, but that's OK, because it has been combined with another work, "Japanese Joinery" by Yasuo Nakahara, creating......
"The Complete Japanese Joinery" book, available on Amazon. As far as I know, when they combined the two works, they left the original form intact, so you get a two-fer, but I prefer buying the used original editions.....recycling, don't you know.
Anyway, "Japanese Woodworking"........



Where the previous book that I was reading, "The Japanese House", was a scholarly exploration of architecture and design, more akin to a college text, this book is more of a technical manual. It strikes me as something that was intended to be used in practical manner, a trade school text. "The Japanese House" tells why the house is built a certain way, while this book.....this book actually tells you how to build the thing. This book is only about house construction, so folks looking for more general woodworking information need to keep looking.

The text is clearly written (At least compared to the Google garble that I've gotten used to reading) and the book is profusely illustrated. There are instructions on basic layout techniques and common trade practice.

Some of this information, the most basic and rudimentary practices, would've been helpful to me last year. I had to figure most of this out on my own, piecing bits together from multiple sources. I could've just bought this book, but the book alone might not have been enough.


The first few chapters deal with the working area, some background information, and basic tool maintenance. Be aware that the treatment is very broad, covers a lot of ground, but at little depth. A beginner using this as their sole source of information might get awfully discouraged, as some of the information seems too vague to be very useful .... if this was combined with an instructor actually showing you......? That might work.



My desire to participate in the Project Mayhem joinery practice stemmed partly from my inexperience cutting the more complex joinery that is one of the hallmarks of the Japanese style construction. When presented with a picture of some amazingly intricate joint, it is hard to know where to actually start. I mean, you've got all of those lines and it seems like there must be a "proper" way to go about cutting the joint, right? Well, this book holds your hand for some of the basic joints, says cut here....then here....chisel out some waste.....then cut here....

This works well for me as a beginner, and once you cut a few different joints, you begin to understand the reasoning that is behind things, why things are cut in a particular order. Cutting a new joint isn't an intimidating prospect anymore.

Unfortunately, it is the drawing of the joint that is now the most challenging, and this book doesn't really help you there. They walk you through construction of 6 different joints, step by step, but each explanation begins...."First draw the shape or cut lines", and that's it.

It seems that there IS NO EASY SOLUTION, haha. I need to practice, actually cutting the damn things rather than just thinking about them!




Ultimately, this book is about practical MODERN construction, and while the author doesn't stoop to using plywood, he does mention it's use. In the other book, "The Japanese House", Heino Engle makes much of the notable lack of diagonal bracing used in house construction. Evidently that's no longer an issue, because this book shows the ample use of diagonals.

They also illustrate the use of many different types of metal fasteners and reinforcements.

It seems unfortunate that steel fasteners are required to make the joinery strong enough to meet Japanese building code approval, but at least traditional wooden joinery is still allowed. This is how tradionally styled houses are actually built today.

Japan has been the world leader in exploring the use of novel building techniques, designs that can survive the catastrophic seismic events that are part of life in many parts of the world. Practicality dictates that a uniform material be used, something that can be quantified by an engineer. That generally means steel. Safer perhaps, but unsightly.

The Japanese government has funded numerous studies to determine the ability of traditional building practices to withstand seismic events. This YouTube video is interesting. Two test houses are placed on a giant shaker table, one built using techniques that were common up to 1950, the other house using more modern methods.

The tradionally built house, ummmm......

Siesmic standards are probably a good idea.




The amado screens that I am so enamoured of are briefly explained here. I had seen these diagrams previously, and they do give the right idea of the construction, but some details seem to be missing. The grooves don't line up as I would expect them to. How many screens per wall can be accommodated? Perhaps if there was a description of how the amado are used......

I suspect that if this was your sole source, you would end up with something that looked approximately correct, but didn't function the way it was intended. That's a common risk when working only from drawings and pictures.


Lots of fasteners.

As an introduction to the trade of building Japanese houses, this book probably serves it's function, but for someone who is interested in Japanese tools and just wants to build some stuff, there isn't much of interest here. I'm glad that I bought it (I'll gladly read ANYTHING that relates to Japanese tools!) and it was an enjoyable read. But what did I gain?

• The book describes a location on a house frame, say a mudsill (the bottom most course of the wall). They generally offer up two choices of joint, the good enough and the higher quality /fancy option. It is good to see how these joints are ranked by people with actual experience (but an explanation of why might be nice).
  
• The step by step instructions for cutting the commonly used joints are a nice way to build confidence.
• The book has clear illustrations of how the shoji screen sills and headers are properly attached to the frame, something that I've been searching out.
• The focus of the Japanese style construction is on practicality foremost. This style of building construction is still being used.

So, not bad overall, and certainly not a waste of time. It will be interesting to see how this ties into the other half of the book, "Japanese Joinery", by Nakahara.

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Japanese woodworking books....."The measure and construction of the Japanese house"

 

 

Tools tools tools......I love 'em, but the #1 tool, bar none, is your head. Knowledge.

 

For the last 3 years I have immersed myself in the "how's" of fixing and using Japanese tools (and recently, the more complex joinery), but an important element has still been missing. There is now ample information about setting up a kanna (though next we need to work on the finer points of using one, but that will come), Project Mayhem joinery practice is helping us to figure out some of the finer points of cutting the more sophisticated joinery, and Sebastian has made great inroads into teaching us how to sharpen the saws, but still essentially what we have been doing is making attractive and educational display pieces.

 

The most commonly available books on Japanese woodworking will help you build shoji screens, but you are on your own when it comes time to mount them. The other books will give you ample inspiration for improving your own joinery skills, but provide little in the way of how to actually cut the many exquisite examples, being little more than picture books. I love seeing the many examples of joinery, but even an enthusiast like me wonders....where does this fancy stuff fit? What's the big picture here?

 

 

Big picture.

Hilo public library had a copy of "Measure and construction of the Japanese house ", by Heino Engle, sent it right over to me in Mountain View. You got to love the interlibrary loan program. I didn't even have to go into town (not the big town anyways ).

 

 

All those complex joints that we have been marveling at and cutting our teeth on? Here is how they are actually used, in the wild as it were.

 

 

Two pages of pictures, from an old instructional Japanese carpentry scroll. Azby Brown makes mention of these instructional scrolls, in his book "Just Enough", saying that the 1800's Edo Japanese government produced many of these, sort of a public service outreach program. Our departments of agricultural, forestry, and building agencies have done the same over the years, but seeing these 200 year old joints, and actually trying to replicate some of them, really gives me a thrill.

These examples have shown me something else. The joinery that we are now working on is challenging, but this stuff is significantly more so. Another interesting thing is that many of these examples show only 1/2 of the joint. Who needs to see both sides, really?

 

 

Foundation details!

 

 

This goes here, use that joint over there....

 

 

 

That awning that I made a few weeks ago? If I had waited just one more day, I would've seen these many, excellent examples.

That might have inspired me to step things up a notch in my own design.

 

God knows, I've looked at hundreds of Google images online, but didn't see much that was of interest. Most of what we build is just streamlined copies of what other people are making, and everything is designed for simplicity and efficiency. Certainly not beauty.

 

 

There is an entire chapter on "Movable space controls", being the shoji and fusuma screens.

 

Dimension standards, joinery and other construction details, also how the screen track ties into the structure as a whole.

Odd though this might sound, I'm actually not a huge fan of Japanese style living spaces. I like having lots of my crap around, and I just find the traditional Japanese house far too spare for my liking. What I do like, is the convertible nature of rooms that is enabled by having sliding wall panels. Try to find good information on sliding doors/walls in house design. Maybe you'll have better luck than me, but I found almost NOTHING , aside from basic shoji and a ton of pocket doors. That's not what I'm looking for.

 

In trying to design our "Hawaii dream home", I keep coming back to the desire to have walls that disappear, or turn into screened panels when it's hot, but then can be closed up for the colder periods. In our last home, I incorporated a ton of French doors to give a similar effect, but here that would be too much, too heavy, and not what we are after. I want old school, simple and lightweight. I didn't find anything, because I didn't know that what I REALLY want is the Japanese shutter system that used on the traditional house. I want "amado", wooden Japanese shutters, I just didn't know it.

 

There is an entire chapter dedicated to "house enclosures", the sliding shutters and doors, latches, joinery, sliding windows and doors.....so much.

 

 

The amado are stored in a wooden closet of sorts, attached to the exterior of the house. I was previously aware of the shutters and their storage, but I was missing many of the key details of their design.

God is in the details, and here they are. Now I know exactly how to build what I've wanted all along.

This is a book that I was able to check out from the library, which is great, because this library book is only an extremely abridged version of the original, "The Japanese House" (now out of print ). I didn't know that I would find anything of interest, but within 30 minutes of opening the cover, I had seen so much information that I had found nowhere else, I immediately ordered the original, unabridged version. I ordered on Friday morning Hawaii time, and by Tuesday (Freaking amazingly fast shipping by the seller! Carefully wrapped and a hand written note, hoping that I would enjoy it, it must have been a personal copy. Incredible.....4 days to Hawaii!)

 

The abridged has no pictures, only engineer style diagrams. The original has many pictures, pictures that try to conveigh some of the beauty and aesthetic behind the traditional house design.

 

 

 

The book is only in part about the actual construction of the house. The majority deals with design and culture, why things are as they are, and how it all relates to the people.

 

 

 

 

This book kind of tied things together for me. The key details are in the abridged version, which is widely available, and would be perfectly adequate for most anyone. The original is special though. The original has so much more. Stone, tile, paper. Recipes for the mud used in the wall structure. Tatami mats, garden and space, family and seclusion, climate, philosophy and religion.....these are just some of the different chapters that are from the original.

 

Heino Engle was a professional German architect who travelled widely before settling in Japan, teaching at Kyoto University for 3 years (1953-56). While this book offers glowing praise of the remarkably thoughtful and refined design inherent in the traditional Japanese house, he also offers some critical commentary of his perceived deficiencies. This is good, because it shows the full depth of his study and admiration (and make no mistake, he admires it greatly), but proves that he is not a blind fan-boy.

 

 

In the forward to the original edition, the publishers write.....

 

 

 

 

 

Well....Maybe a bit of a fan-boy. It's certainly not for everyone, haha.

 

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