# Anyone for Japanese Joints?



## RossJarvis (14 Oct 2013)

Now that I’ve made my own toolbox I must be a craftsman, innit! So as I’ve been threatening, it’s time to get crafty. I have read a number of books on sawdust and shaving manufacturing including these;





The one on the left is good on history and stuff, with some interesting bits on restoring an old temple, the one in the middle is a bit superfluous but has some nice photographs, The one on the right is very good on a lot of carpentry and joinery and includes lots of very scary joints.

So I thunked “let’s make a splicing joint, with that old oak in the outhouse” I was thinking of a “lapped gooseneck splicing joint” (Koshikake Kama Tsugi?!?), but then decided that might be a step too far, even for yours truly and the “apprentice”. So I decided on a lapped dovetail. I’ve done a couple or three of these before and almost got them right, so where’s the problem. This is called the “Koshikake Ari Tsugi”, not quite sure what the words mean but I presume it’s some relation to ‘Ari Secombe. There’s two versions of this for a splicing joint, one wot is a fair bit simpler than the other;





The top one is a simple lapped dovetail and the one underneath has a sort of mortice n’ tenony thing in the bottom, so I’m sort of thinking of doing that one. Hennyway, out to the outhouse and find me some wood;





here’s a couple of bits of oak wot I got fresh cut and green at Cressington Temple, for a couple of quid about four or five years ago, for some unknown reason they were left-overs;





Could have something to do with the pithy bits (pith?) in them and the odd size. Anyway I took the pith and stuck it in the outhouse till I could thunk of summat to do with ‘em. That time has now arrived. Firstly I thought I might need something a little bit better than the garden staging to plane this on. Now as luck would have it I noticed a bit of 2x6 that had been hanging around in the porch, hidden behind a Big Austrian and a Little Israeli, dragged it round the back and started to plane an end stop for it;




once again, I resorted to hi-tech bench dogs to hold the planed bit;





Once the stop was square and straight(ish), I thought the planing bench could do with a bit of planing too;





Bish, Bash, Ouch, Bosh, one planing bench with stop;





Nextly I cut a bit of oak off the end of the oak and bunged the rest of the oak back in the outhouse;





I wasn’t 100% sure how the ryoba saw would deal with this wood and it was a bit tricky to start, once I’d stopped using the “rip” side to crosscut and turned it round, it went fine. It was a little bit slower than cutting pine, but not by much and left a lovely finish. Next I thought that I’d better get the proper support services in place, as I’d not utilised these well last week;





…just need to keep an eye out for the apprentice to stop him scoffing the lot! Nextly I started bashing the oak with the plane, having remembered to re-sharpen the iron (and deliberately avoided dropping the sharpening stones on the tiles this time). It took a fair bit of pushing in comparison to planing pine and there was very little between having the blade below the mouth and skating across the surface and “Oh my good groovy, that’s resisting a bit”. And the shavings were fairly different too;





…generally quite wrinkly and harder to see through than pine! I couldn’t find any candles to rub on the plane bottom and couldn’t be ar…bothered to sharpen the no 4 or 4 ½. It’s some considerable time since I’ve planed oak, so I’m not sure if this is to be expected or not. Anyway, the surface came out reasonably smooth and almost shiny and with a good stroke of luck I got the edges square;





…and after a few cups of tea, inter-sperced with grunting and iron tweaking we ended up with;





…a lump of oak. So far it’s looking pretty good, nice flat surfaces and square edges (in a rectangular fashion if you get my drift), The thin edges are parallel, but the fat ones aint. The Hampshire monsoon started again so I came back inside to gabble on to you. I want to get the whole thing parralel, cut it in half, mark out the joints and get it made, however the BBC says it’ll be sunny all day tomorrow, so I’m digging out my Sou’Wester, but if they’re actually right for once I might be able to get this job done in a day (famous words of the last variety).


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## powertools (14 Oct 2013)

I and I think many others enjoy your WIP threads please keep them coming.
I am away for a few days from tomorrow and look forward to catching up on my return.


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## Baldhead (14 Oct 2013)

Love looking at WIP pictures, however I was a little bit disappointed, when I saw the title I did think it was perhaps something to do with Japanese marijuana!!! #-o #-o #-o 

Baldhead


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## RossJarvis (15 Oct 2013)

Baldhead":1wl1f36d said:


> Love looking at WIP pictures, however I was a little bit disappointed, when I saw the title I did think it was perhaps something to do with Japanese marijuana!!! #-o #-o #-o
> 
> Baldhead



:lol: :lol: :lol: Aha, you were taken in by my deliberate ploy. I'm seeing if I can attract more customers with an appeal to reprobates and those from the counterculture, plus Daily Mail readers who wish to get annoyed!


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## Dangermouse (15 Oct 2013)

You al fresco approach to wood word is very refreshing, especially when its windy and raining.


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## RossJarvis (15 Oct 2013)

Well, once again I over-estimated my abilities or under-estimated time or something, so even though it was sunny(ish), I didn’t finish. However I did start! Yesterday I’d nearly got a lump of wood into shape. Today I managed to get it nearer to shape and cut it in half. The wood was slightly ramp shaped, so I marked where to plane to;





This was the thick end, and planed, planed, planed. As I’d now sharpened the blade on the Record No 4 (see my post in the tools section where I’d fixed the broken whetstone), I tried that to see if it was any easier. The back-iron-chip-breaker-spare-bit-of-metal-thingy was set further from the sharp edge on this as well to see if that made anything easier. No it wasn’t, so back to the 5 ½ and I got the job done (or so I thought). Here’s the shavings, if anyone who knows what they’re doing can comment, it would help, is this wot oak should plane like?;






Generally I was very pleased with the finish. It was smooth, flat and iridescent on the non-holey bits of the grain;









The grain changed direction on one side and even that came up fine;





This is what it looked like before planing;





…and this shows how many shavings have been removed, side view;





…top view;





Once I was happy with it, I marked centre lines down all faces and marked the top (it could have been the bottom, but what’s a top or bottom between friends?;





Then “BONSAI” I attacked it with the saw and cut it in half (why do the Japanese rush into battle shouting ’small trees’?);





By now the “apprentice” was nagging me for some more Hobnobs, so we took a walk to the garage, where I bought some baccy instead. Whilst he was in a huff we had a scout round for some more hazelnuts, only to realise that the squirrels and field mice have cottoned on to my free food supply, and they’ve scoffed the b****y lot. After this I had a look through my Japanese Joinery book to check on the dimensions for this joint, found out it didn’t tell me, so I made them up;





If you look closely you can see a bit of a miscockulation! I generally use an edge for reference when marking out, but apparently the traditional way is to use the centre-line for this sort of thing, so maybe that threw me. Back out to the “workshop” and time for a bit of ripping;





…the book often suggests a particular order to do this in, but I couldn’t make head nor tail of this so tried an order which seemed logical. I find it best to not saw off your lines before you need them. The first cut was the half way up line. The ryoba cut through the oak very easily and pretty fast (mine is a Bakuma 250 from Dieter Schmidt’s Fine Tools). Then I cut down the sides of the dovetail;





…here I’m not quite following the line, but at least I was cutting into the bit I didn’t want. I read somewhere the suggestion that on the male pieces you want to cut down the outside of your marked line and on female pieces on the inside of the line. This should leave you a lines-width bit of wood to play around with when it comes to fitting. If I’ve got that wrong, then I’ve got a lines-width bit of air to play with. Then I cross-cut the wast off to leave;





…some bits of wood of various shapes. There are two square recesses at the bottom on each side, for these I cut diagonals across all the lines, corner to corner and had a bit of waste I could remove fully;





…which left a couple of triangles to get out with a chisel. At this point I was worried as I hadn’t any broken whetstones left, so for the second time today I got ‘em off the top of the fridge-freezer and sharpened a medium chisel. This I bashed into the corners, first one way;





…then t’other;





There may be an easier or better way of doing this and if anyone knows please tell me before tomorrow! After a bit of bashing, paring and swearing I sort of nearly finished one side of the joint;





Then it started to look like it was going to get dark and it was getting a bit nippy so I bailed out for the day and came in, to see the beloved munching off with the last of the Hobnobs! The BBC says there’s heavy rain forecast for tomorrow, so I’m getting my flip-flops and shorts out. If they’re actually correct you may not hear from me for a day or two.

TTFN


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## RossJarvis (16 Oct 2013)

Well, the BBC were right and wrong. The Hampshire Monsoon resumed, then it stopped and then it got sunny. I had to take the “apprentice” to his doctor (he goes private, we’re NHS, must have a look at that contract!), but managed to get an hour of butchery in. I checked the uncut bit of wood to the cut bit, noticed a couple of miscockulations and attempted to uncockulate them, must take more time marking out. I put an extra couple of lines in to carry a joint around an end, then I ripped down some lines;









…cross-cut another and cut what I could for the dovetail housing-holey bit;





…then some bashing and paring with the chisels;





….which I’m occasionally getting the hang of. And it looks like the female part is coming together;





Nextly, I carefully matched the two sides up and carefully, gently pared at the tight bits………and then got a bit too carried away;





….leaving some gaps you could park a Routemaster in, to be specific, I think you could get an RML lengthways in some of ‘em. It was getting late and I was obviously over-tired so I stopped. The sockety-holey-dovetail bit wasn’t finished, leaving the top proud;





..and I was having issues clearing the corners;





…so I’m thinking of “Mullering” up a couple of smaller chisels to make a pair of skew-wotsits. I’m sure they’ll come in handy.

.....and oh b****r I've just burnt tonight's beef bhuna whilst forgetting I put it on and typing this lot!


TTFN


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## Woodturner1972 (16 Oct 2013)

Loving the post, keep going with it! Fingers crossed the weather will be good for you tomorrow


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## Togalosh (16 Oct 2013)

hhmm..it never occured to me that there were other cultures doing different joinery..but I like that joint & will keep my eye out for a book or 2.

Not that I am an expert but shouldn't you mark & cut 1 joint..half a joint??... at a time (using the first to mark out the second) instead of both at once?

I like the idea of al fresco working too.


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## RossJarvis (16 Oct 2013)

Togalosh":2n36860m said:


> hhmm..it never occured to me that there were other cultures doing different joinery..but I like that joint & will keep my eye out for a book or 2.
> 
> Not that I am an expert but shouldn't you mark & cut 1 joint..half a joint??... at a time (using the first to mark out the second) instead of both at once?
> 
> I like the idea of al fresco working too.



I generally try and mark the second piece off the first, however, due to the "step" in this, it would have been pretty hard to do. Without the step I would have done the male part and marked from this. The Japanese apparently mark joints out separately, a bit like mass production techniques and they get things spot on (I may have to withdraw my application to the Honshu Carpenters Guild and Teriyake/Sake Club). The general idea was to cut "inside" the lines and pare to fit, this would have worked well, unfortunately the paring was a bit too exuberant (hammer) and that's where it all went to cock . Also, offering the ends of the pieces up to each other before cutting, the lateral marks could have been done pretty well evenly (please don't ask why I didn't). It's a learning curve and I'm somewhere below mid-way, some may feel below the start but hey-ho.

If you're interested, The "Complete Japanese Joinery" is an excellent book, It does what it says on the tin and I've yet to come across any other book to add to what it has. If you want just one book on the subject, get this one;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Japane ... e+Joineery

Plus I burnt the Bhuna again!


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## RossJarvis (17 Oct 2013)

I think I’ll call it a day on this, any more effort and I’ll bollix it up more. First thing I did was hunt around for a couple of old Stanley chisels I’ve got to make skew-wotsits. I eventually found this;





….which seems to show no improvement and possibly some regression in the past 5 years. Stanley seemed to have taken his chisels back, so I ground out a couple of my smaller Bahco chisels;





…looking at the rust on them, and the edges, it looked like I’d never used them, which probably means I’ll definitely need these with square sharp bits any minute now. Bish bash Ouch (oh, you're supposed to keep the other hand behind the sharp bit are you?) Bosh and I’d done as much b*****ing stuff up as seemed wise. The joint was flush(ish) and tight(ish), but if you look carefully into the gaps you may see some headlights from a bus or two;













… it definitely looks better from this angle;





Lessons learnt; don’t make Japanese joints out of seasoned oak; I need to make up a square “paring block”; I need lots more practice; I need to take more care marking out; pare and compare, pare and compare, not pare, pare, pare, pare, compare “oh b****r”.

Hope you found this one interesting. I’m going out for a walk with t’ “apprentice” and he’s carrying the chestnuts back.

TTFN


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## Racers (17 Oct 2013)

That's a complicated joint and you haven't done bad at all. 

Pete


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## Woodchips2 (17 Oct 2013)

Ross are you trying to curry favour with the wife cooking all this Bhuna? :roll: 

Where do you envisage using this joint?

Regards Keith


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## Togalosh (17 Oct 2013)

The book is in the basket - thanks for broadening my horizons further RJ.

Practice is the key.. professional sportsmen still practice almost every day even when they are no1 although they've done that shot/jump/kick many thousands of times before & joints are the same. If that's your first joint in 5 years then you're doing well.

I saw there were books on Japenese house buiding too..is this what you are working up to?


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## RossJarvis (18 Oct 2013)

Dear Togalosh and Keith

Mainly these joints are just practice, I did a timber framing course a few years back, and somewhere in my mind is the dream of buying some woodland, cutting down a few trees and building a well decent shed to play in. Alternatively, plan B would be to get paid for making shavings and dust doing restorations and the like. Currently it's a hobby, keeping me sane and a desire to get my hand skills up to scratch.

I think this particular joint is used to join two timbers together for a sill, where there's little tension. Usually in 120x120mm + stock. I just love timber joints for some strange reason.

The wife came home much later, enjoyed the curry and was able to reheat it without further burning, then removed my bank card and told me I was a very naughty boy for spending money we didn't have, so favour was not curried!


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## Togalosh (18 Oct 2013)

..make things to sell then..no?


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## RossJarvis (18 Oct 2013)

Togalosh":2qye9u5w said:


> ..make things to sell then..no?



It would be nice, maybe, however I come from a very long line of folk who've never been able to make money, whether skilled or not!


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