Craftsmanship in Wood

Howdy Folks,

I recently bought another 70mm kanna with designs on modifying the dai to make a hikouki kanna, similar to that which Inomoto made for John Reed Fox, Iida and others. I've sourced solid sections of bamboo but I'm a little bit up in the air on where to find the springs, which are presumably flat springs, that push down the bamboo pressure bar.

I have designs on building some shoji, one side of my house gets direct sunlight in the afternoon/evening and can't think of a better way to make that more appealing. Closed curtains and pull down shades look kind of not great.

I digress....any help is appreciated.

I needed a refresher on the hikouki kanna, so I'll add some info here. tl;dr: it's a Japanese depth-skid plane, often used for precision thicknessing of shoji/kumiko parts. For more about this plane, especially the particulars of the bamboo spring, Daed Toolworks has a nice blog post that shows and explains more.

John, Gabe Dwiggins' post is really comprehensive;

http://granitemountainwoodcraft.com/201 ... ing-plane/

That said still vague on the springs, lol.

What I understood was was going to use spring steel, and that he planned to cut up an old saw to get it. That makes some sense I think, as I vaguely recall coming reading somewhere that saw plates can be made from spring steel. The main point he made was not to use a induction/case hardend blade, as that might be too brittle. Then there was a bit about hammering and anvils to shape it.

I think here (Sydney) it would be far cheaper and easier to get an old saw than to buy spring steel from a supplier, as I doubt I could get anything less than metres of the stuff... Anyway, I don't know if this was much help, or just told you what you'd already managed to get out of reading it.

On a not-so-related note: when I first read the post I was perplexed by the concept of aeroplane planes, but I guess the idea of a "flying going" kanna makes sense too. Sometimes knowing a small amount of Japanese around here is just confusing. [飛行機 (hikouki = airplane) vs 飛行機鉋 (hikouki kanna = these things)].

That's where I am at, everything spring related seems to come in large quantities. I found springs I think would be perfect but I dont need 25 of them....

When I look at the Inamoto kanna dai it appears to have just a strip of spring steel locked into a mortise, but not 100% sure on that.

I thought about this a bit: isn't what you're looking for a bit like a wind up coil spring for an old-school alarm clock or the like? Maybe scavenge one of those if you can find one.

With further searching I found some hobbyist "constant force springs", which turned up some results for Amazon and a few other US (and Australia!) based suppliers. I think they are the things you get in those pull back and let go car toys. I have a few of those at home, perhaps I should secretly "borrow" them from the children and have a look. Although the springs for those might not be strong enough given their likely thickness relatively short length needed.

Kumiko are something I might build one day, but the plane itself is interesting to me as well, so I'm interested in knowing where you end up with this.

I'm not sure those will work since they do not appear to apply alot of force over a small area, I appreciate the suggestion however and it has led me to some manufacturers.