briarbranchwoodworks-blog

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The Bubinga table in its new home.

The top consists of two slabs of Bubinga. The base is held together by drawbored mortise and tenon construction. The top adheres to the base via sliding dovetails. The base is charredwith a torch after finishing and brushed with a bristle brush. All surfaces are finished with a handplane and waxed, no sandpaper.

I had to add a crossbrace to the leg construction, because the weight of the Bubinga was too much. The table rocked a significant amount. Now it‘s rock solid! There will be a video, but I need some shots of the finished table in the clients apartment first.

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New project 😊

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Handcarved eating spoon from birch - this one has also been snapped up but I have plenty more eating spoons in my shop here https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/OneTreeWoodcrafts?section_id=21919721

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Seasoned bowl blanks…

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Stain and reassemble in process. Stain is called “worn navy”.

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Happy Cob Tuesday! What are you burning in your cherished corn cob today?

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Attached pulls. Attached hinges. Not the hinges I wanted to use but they are the ones that worked. I’ll have to practice on the hidden hinge some more before I use them on a project. Now to dismantle and stain.

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One thing I liked a lot about the Takenaka Carpentry Museum was that they featured a reproduction of a saw blacksmith’s workshop :3

It was highly interesting to see it and to see the arrangement of tools and the tea kettle :3 I feel like no country celebrates tea like Japan :D Not by putting it on a pedestal but by it being a part of the fabric of life in Japan :) I feel like it is a very honest and calm way to enjoy tea :)

The display showing the process of hewing a board was very interesting too :3 Basically the split wood was hewn using an adze (chouna :) and then flattened and finished with a spear plane (Yari Kanna :)

Japanese joinery actually uses nails but these are rarely used as steel had been expensive and rare in the past which made using joinery more attractive to be used in the construction of homes and due to the experience gained with these methods and their standardisation made them a viable alternative in the long run :) It is kind of lucky that things developed in this way although nowadays a lot of steel fasteners are being used in the construction of homes :)

There were so many nice chisels around too :3 Chisels are often the overlooked/unloved tools of the workshop but as someone having to use not so good chisels throughout most of my life a good chisel is so valuable and nice to use that I great appreciate them :3

It made me happy that they included a screw jack into the exhibition as they are a very common tool used by carpenters to jack up one corner of a building to mend a post :) (this is possible due to traditional homes being kind of flexible :)

There are also old stone tools for woodworking on display :) It is also interesting to see an old spear plane that looks just like the new ones do :D

I hope to go back to this place again this year :3 They sell great books too and actual research papers that try to track the history and the reason for certain shapes of tools :)

I wish everyone a great time with sweet dreams (^-^)/

Last week I had to stay at home due to me having an injured foot but this week I’ll start working again :) So maybe I’ll write a bit less (^-^;) Sorry m(_ _)m

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Japanese planes and some chisels displayed in the Takenaka Carpentry Museum (^-^)

I appreciated how they showed the different uses of many of those planes in display :)

Once you understand their use and their limitations they are wonderful tools to use :3 The reasons I still use western style planes are that they can be adjusted without a hammer which is making them quieter which is a big plus when your living room is your workshop and that their cast iron soles don’t wear that easily… 

Anyway I recognised most planes in this museum and greatly enjoyed seeing some that were new to me :) I wish I could have taken some home with me :D

Kanna opened a whole new world for me as back then they were affordable and  I had trouble with my wrists so I couldn’t use western planes too well but thanks to the friend who introduced me to Japanese saws I discovered Japanese planes as well and was finally able to do woodworking well :) So all I can do now I do owe to Japanese tools.

I especially liked the display that is used to show how grooves are cut into wood :) It is a very honest display showing all the necessary steps from sawing out the sides, chiseling out most of the waste, roughly flattening the bottom using a Kote Nomi (trowel chisel :), finish planing the bottom and finish planing the sides :)

They show a great amount of sharpening and finishing stones too :)

I wish everyone a great new week with sweet dreams and sharp tools (^-^)/

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https://www.instagram.com/parachutehome/

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Japanese saws displayed in the Takenaka Carpentry Museum :)

I think these are some of the best displays in the museum because they show very well how these saws were intended to be used :)

I also liked the display showing the saw sharpening implements used in Japan and an example of a very worn saw (not worn out yet :) and a fresh saw next to it to show the result of a long life :)

I like Japanese saws a lot and they are what sparked my interest in Japanese tools :3 I like the way they cut and feel while cutting, the control I have over the cut and their aesthetics :)

There are many different shapes of saws and once I started using them I was amazed how well they work in the scenario they were designed for :3 Japanese saws work very well on both hard and softwoods!

I liked how they embedded sawblades in resin to enable you to pick them up and take a close look at them :) It was a very nice idea to do this (^-^)

It is also very telling that most of the displays are not bolted down or feature a chain to prevent people from taking stuff with them :)

I like this museum a lot and I’m thinking of going there again this year :)

I wish everyone a great time with sweet dreams and sharp saws (^-^)/

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Cottage || Stormsong Valley, Kul Tiras

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Chainsawing…

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I have been rather lenient with uploading on tumblr. The mobile app is the worst when you don’t have wireless :/ This was a meditation throne (I still don’t know what to call it) I built for a client’s sifu. He specifically came to me for the joinery work, because he did not want any screws (Google my business is pretty good!). The build is all handplaned and waxed, as per usual. The void in the seating area was filled with a tatami and a thin pillow.

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Layout tools displayed at the Takenaka Carpentry museum :)

How important layout tools are to every woodworker is easily visible as they create the basis of where one cuts. Being able to cut is as important as knowing where how to cut to achieve a strong connection or durable surface :)

One of the things presented to each temple in Japan after it has been built is a symbolic, ornate toolset which mostly consists of a square a ink line, a saw, an adze, a spear plane and the bamboo brushes used to do the layout using ink :)

The layout tools used in Japan are mostly light and delicate like most of the Japanese implements used in daily life :)

I do like Japanese traditional carpenters squares and I would really like to own and use one made from German silver (it is not real silver but rather a nickel alloy that looks a bit like silver :) I like their unassuming unshiny look (^-^) In order to understand Japanese layouts and aesthetics it is important to understand Japanese measuring units which are based upon the human body and the factor ten (like the metric system :) which makes basic layout very easy because every buildings layout is based on a fixed unit necessary for one human being to be able to sleep in a room which is also the size of the Tatami mats which is used to this day to denominate the size of a room or house :)

The ornamental nature of the ink lines is based on them being a bit like a craftsman’s business-card and made during the off season by most although very pretty ones can be bought at stores now :) However a self made one is a craftsman’s pride :) The inkline is always used in conjunction with a bamboo brush called Sumizashi which is very simple and easily made :) Another thing that is easily found in Japanese tool stores are winding sticks which are rather hard to fins in Europe… <=I never saw them in any store I’ve been to so far… (I made some myself though)

A very important part of creating the various curves on traditional Japanese buildings are templates :) These are mostly made by senior craftsmen who have a lot of experience :)

I also bought a book about layout tools which had precise measurements for creating a layout set for creating floor planes and seeing how they would work out :3

I wish everyone a great time with sweet dreams and accurate measuring equipment (^-^)/

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Look, I’m not saying that my favorite part of wood finishing is the inherent thrill of danger, I’m just saying that water-based finishes don’t have to have a label on them reading “TO PREVENT SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION” and where is the fun in that?