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.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Our Hawaiian home....day#3

 

 

 

Back to work.

 

Renee had lots of stuff on her mind, but what do you do, where do you start when you are beginning with nothing?

 

Do what is fun!

How about a bench, to rest your weary self?

 

 

We've got the rocks.

 

We chose this place for its quiet location, but also just....the place, you know? There are trees, there is stone.

 

 

The idea is to see what is here, then allow that to guide us in what and how to build. Rather than bring in the heavy equipment to strip the ground bare, we want to keep our footprint human sized. Try not to buy, and to build in human time scale, if that makes sense.

 

Don't pour a foundation that will exist for an eternity, especially when the house itself is total junk within 20 years. I used to love cement, and reveled in the strength it gave to what was being built, but now I view it more as a crutch. A permanent, everlasting.....something, that will be difficult to reuse in any way. Dry laid stone can be repaired, then reused. Forever. Like reverse cement. Another nice bonus.....this lava rock is beautiful, perfectly shaped for easy stacking, and....it's kinda light, too.

 

 

 

So, on day #3 we dug more rock, and piled more REALLY beautiful soil.

 

 

This is better than anything that I've yet seen, anywhere, rich with silty loam, friable and full of good "dirt" smell. It will be interesting to test the pH. God knows we'll have plenty of biochar handy, if we need to buffer the soil in some way. Maybe I'll distill out the "Wood vinegar", see if there's anything to that miracle talk.

 

Also interesting is that we are finding some of it to be almost like clay. Is a Japanese mud infill wall to be in our future?

 

 

Ellie rescued a nest-fallen baby cardinal last week, and despite our fears, the little thing has managed to hang in there. He's looking at the camera, a little pissed off.

 

 

I've been on bird duty while Ellie is in school, as the guy needs to be fed every 15-30 minutes. He started out nearly bald, but now has most of his juvenile feathers set, and is taking short flights. Mostly though, he rides around on your finger, and you get a lot of this....

 

"INSERT FOOD HERE!"

 

 

 

So it was REALLY hot. I'm not really a "sweat-er", and I've never lived anywhere like this. To perspire, just standing there doing nothing and still get drenched.....it's very novel still. It reminds me of a sauna, 'cept all the time. It makes clothing very unpleasant, but I have no intention of subjecting our new neighbors to that sight, lucky them.

So Renee and I are hot and tired from two days of pulling and digging, so Renee wants to do something else that's fun instead. Here's her bench, big enough for three.

 

I love the way she creates such flowing sculpture. And it's in the shade.

 

 

So what am I doing on this hot afternoon, while Renee is slaving away to make us a better life?

 

I'm sitting in the woods, drinking a beer (or three, haha). Sunlight brings thick vegetative growth, but once you break through the thicket close to the road? It opens up in there, a bit at least. The sun is less intense, it's quiet and cool. The moss is deep and lush, and the ground is a compound of broken lava and detritus. And Guava.

 

 

 

 

Lots of Guava. It's the thin whippy shoots that make navigating this environment challenging, as they will grow everywhichway trying to get to the sun. Some of the whips might be 1/4" thick, but 15' long and wound around the other growth.

 

 

A perfect tripping hazard and the Aluhe ferns are even worse. So. What can we build that uses thin sticks as a material? Wattle and daub comes to mind, woven screens and dividers, trellis material for climbing fruits and plants --The passion fruit are going crazy right now, and will cover everything in sight if you give them half a chance. Pole beans might tolerate this area, with its lower rainfall, we'll see.--.

Anyone have any ideas? Comment!

 

 

Just poisoning the invasive species seems like a wrong way of living, but that's an option, and evidently the only way that people have found of keeping the Guava in check. This stuff is seriously crazy, grows like mad and chokes out the other species. It's drops tasty fruit prolificly, filled with hard seeds that get eaten by people/pigs/pheasants and then passed through the GI tract. Planted and fertilized in one. Very efficient.

 

I would prefer to treat the guava as a resource, it's fruit would make an interesting homebrew, and the wood is very tough, dense and resilient. The down side to the lumber is that the high sugar content in the wood makes it attractive to both bugs and rot. That needs to be considered in designing for its use. Ground contact would be foolish, but properly dried and seasoned, it's good stuff. Stripping the bark immediately after cutting would reduce the bug concerns some, but even after being chewed up by beetle larvae it still retains much of its strength. Here at the tool shed, we've got a hand rail on the stairs that is barely 1" thick, but it's saved me from numerous potential falls. Good stuff. I'm eager to see what kind of charcoal it provides.

 

 

Because the trees here are rather thick, the guava has had to grow tall and straight to reach the top of the canopy. Many of these clumps are nicely developed. Here is just one of.....hundreds? I don't know yet, but there is never a shortage of Guava. Here is my size 10 shoe for scale.

 

 

The larger ones are a solid 4", but there are many larger ones as well. These are just where I happened to be sitting at the time.

 

 

The primary trees are the native Ohia, and the Guava are just filling in the gaps. My hand has a solid 9" span, so this old guy is maybe 12" diameter. 200 years old? These grow VERY slowly, but it's a guess.

 

The general practice is to plow the land flat using a bulldozer, then trucking the debris to the solid waste station for mulching. Often the mulch eventually works it's way back to the land, to provide a barrier in gardens and landscaping. It's better than nothing, but seems awfully energy intensive. Boring, too. Who wants a flat chunk of land? A lawn, haha! Yeah, right.

 

 

 

Guava, tall and straight, 6" butt, 20' clear. There are hundreds of these right here, millions if you look around.

 

I'm getting some ideas. Pole barns don't get much easier than this. Mark Grable recently reminded me of a quick way to lash poles together, using a specific twisted wire wrap. I've got the poles and I've got the wire. I've got lots of salvaged steel roofing, too, perfect for throwing up a quick and dirty shelter, ugly though it is. The steel roof also allows you to capture the frequent rains. People hate this Guava and will pay you to remove it (if you poison or dig out the roots, no easy feat.). One of the adjacent properties is so thick with the stuff that you can barely see through it.

 

Help me find a use for this stuff! As a society, we need to shift our thoughts from buying, to making. Therein lies true wealth and prosperity. Knowledge too. Share what you know.

 

Don the "Shinglemaker" (one of my favorite blogs, his pictures are so beautiful, showing his strength and understanding of the simple materials that he uses in his craft. He pays attention.) recently wrote about how the work he does is not economically feasible as a business, you can't afford what his work will cost, he only does his best work for himself. Even though I have not 1/10th his skill, the work that I do is still beyond value. It's ironic that by consciously choosing a life of near poverty, we can learn and create such things that are not really available, at any price. I give away what I make, but you can't really buy it. That will probably change in the near future, but the idea remains.....what is our time/life worth?

 

The idea of true cost and pricing is difficult, as good, solid construction, simple and built to last for generations is expensive, particularly in terms of the skilled labor involved. Fewer people every day are knowledgeable about these things and we are so far over the curve, that the days of once common sense and practical knowledge are distant beyond sight. We are over the horizon. Don writes of a frame for a window, built solid, yet with knowledge and understanding of how practice and time flows. You can build a window frame that will fit one window only, then when the window breaks, as they all will in time or better windows are now used and the old ones are obsolete, or out of style, or....whatever, you're screwed. It probably doesn't matter, because the house will probably be ready for the landfill by now anyways.

 

Or.

 

You can build solid, but with the understanding that times change, and buildings change as well. Don admires the traditional Dutch practice of framing an overly large opening so that it can accommodate differing standards. A larger window? No problem. Cut the opening bigger. Rotten wood? Cut and replace. His example was specific to massive construction like brick or stone building, but the concept is one that should be kept firmly in mind. How will the building evolve? Even if it just evolves into the ground as a decayed ruin......that is good, too.

 

Posted with Blogsy

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.

Posted with Blogsy

Project Mayhem Japanese joinery challenge #4 Katasage ari

 

 

Joinery practice #4, chosen by Steven of "The twin maples"

 

A great joint, the "Katasage ari", taken from the FANTASTIC book "Wood joints in classical Japanese architecture".

 

 

 

Download a free copy here....

https://fabiap.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/wood-joints-in-classical-japanese-architecture.pdf

before it disappears. It's now out of print, and it is seriously good, having not only a great sampling of the more common joinery used, but also a little bit of where the particular joint is used and often the reason *why* a joint was chosen. This book was written by two guys, one an old school Japanese carpenter, trained nearly 100 years ago, the other an engineer and architect. This book is just great.

Thanks so much Steven, for showing me this book!

It's raining again, go figure. Have I mentioned that it rains a lot here?

 

Rather than begin with some nicely squared stock, this time I'm going for something different. This joint seems like one of those eminently practical ones, although not overly complex. My thought is that something like this joint might actually have some good applications in the real world, like, something that I could be using repeatedly in the very near future. I've been looking for some good, simple de-mountable joinery to use for building temporary or transportable shelter, and this seems a likely prospect.

 

And....I want to chop some wood, so I think that this one.....this one will be cut from the roughest stock available.

 

 

The second that the rain stops. I run to the wood pile and grab a couple of likely looking chunks.

I cut a length of Guava, and also split off a section of a rotten old Ohia that I've been messing with.

 

 

Rough out, using the hatchet....

 

...then plane the minimum amount of surface flat, just the area that needs to receive the mortice.

 

 

 

See how jagged and rough the Ohia is?

The sumisashi marks this wet, rough wood with no complaints at all. I wouldn't dare trying this using my oh-so-fancy $10 felt tip fine line drawing pen, but with this simple bamboo pen....no problem. I am such a convert! It seemed messy and kind of scary, but in reality it's just fun, and actually quite clean. The ink only seeps into the wood the barest amount, and completely disappears with 1-2 passes of the plane. In comparison, a pencil might require twice as much planing to erase a mistake in layout, most notable in softwoods. It's not for everyone, I know, but Holy Crap, I'm in love!

 

So here's where I screw up. This joint is so simple, I should've honoured that intent. Instead, I felt that the tenoned piece should be shouldered, to offer a more solid base and to assure that everything stays square. That, and I didn't want to plane this wood down any more than was necessary. What I should've done, was to just rough the thing to size using the axe, then call it good.

Anyway, the layout is getting to be more of an enjoyable part of the experience. I credit the ink, haha.

The purplish wood is the Ohia, one of the few native Hawaiian trees, also one of the most dense to be found anywhere. This particular piece is still wet, having been from an ancient deadfall tree, maybe 400 years old, but portions of the trunk are still usable though much of the trunk is rotten. The technical briefs that I've read about the attributes and uses of this wood say that it can be cut and machined using the same type of tooling that you would use when processing frozen lumber. Yikes!

 

Actually, when wet, I found that it cuts surprisingly nicely, using Sebastian's awesome saw, the big 300mm ryoba. Dry Ohia is another matter.

 

 

When I decided to cut the joint using non-square stock, I also figured that I would just kinda eyeball the angles too, as you can't mark the side face of a round log. Not well, at least. If you look to the background, you can see that I was quite liberal in my interpretation of the tenon design here. This might be considered a bastard cousin to the Katasage ari joint that I was SUPOSED to cut, haha.

And no, it's not that the color balance of my camera is off, it's that the guava that I'm using is stained a funky yellow color from bug and bacterial staining. Normally it would show a creamy sapwood with purplish brown heartwood.

 

 

For starters, I cut the mortice to fit the tenon. I ignore the area where the wedge goes, for now. I cut the joint haunched (I guess that's what it's called) with a 1/2" deep area for the haunched area, then the rest of the tenon at full depth. I cut that stuff first, but didn't bother taking pictures. The undercut area that accommodates the angled half-dovetailed part I cut by eye out of necessity, but I was able to use a "Gabe D™" bevel gauge to give some confirmation.

After drilling and cutting most of the waste from the mortice, I need to cut the wedge before I can finish. I start out with a chunk of Guava.

 

 

Plane two parallel faces until the width matches the mortice.

 

 

I saw the wedging surface at a likely looking angle. Nope, didn't measure, but then, I didn't need to.

 

 

 

I guestimate how deeply I want the wedge to fit into the mortice, then use that spot on the wedge itself to determine how much more material to remove. Essentially, set it where you want it, then mark it.

 

 

 

The wedge itself makes a handy bevel gauge.

 

 

 

 

First fit didn't require much trimming at all, but then, it was far from being a piston fit. Hammering in the wedge was a trip.

This joint is surprisingly solid!

 

 

Being who I am, I had to get the fit just the tiniest bit finer, one of the shoulders was 1/16" off. And....this is meant to be a de-mountable joint, so that's part of the deal, right?

I had to drill a hole into the wedge to get a better grip, then had to do some fairly vigorous tapping (using my new Ohia maul) to get the wedge to pop free. This wet wood is very grippy! If a person intended this joint to be de-mountable on a regular basis, you might consider a mortice in the wedge itself, its own tapered wedge, just to break it free from the body of the joint. A hole drilled through the joint, that goes through opposite the wedge would be another option, if the hole wouldn't be visible in the finished work. That way you could just poke a screwdriver through the hole, popping the wedge out with ease, a better solution than this, I think.

One other point. 

In practicing these joints for the first time, my inclination is to try to "improve" them in some way. "It would be stronger, if I just...", that sort of thing. This is a perfect example of the original being good enough. As drawn in the book's diagram, this joint is fast, easy, and strong. Cutting this guy took maybe 2 hours, but should've taken 45 minutes, at least for a beginner like me. I made the joint slightly stronger perhaps, but if ultimate strength was a concern, there are a multitude of other joints to choose from that would be better suited for this application. I constantly fight myself in this way. 

 

 

So....Awesome fun joint,and very useful too. Next time round, I will cut this guy as the simple thing that it should be. I was horribly late on this challenge, as I was finishing up the long awaited awning frames for the shed.

Simple simple stuff, but it shows a certain flair, I suppose (actually rather embarrassed, but....). Of course, as soon as I was done, the most amazing book came to my attention, one that had numerous examples of much more elegant and/or practical ways to build this particular structure.

 

That's for later.

Posted with Blogsy