Craftsmanship in Wood

This summer I spent a few months on the east coast assembling a temple "gate" (only one doorway) at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT. The project was designed and laid out by Paul Discoe; we milled and cut out the solid elm frame in Oakland, shipped it over to CT and two men in their 60s-70s and I (a fledgling 26 year old) assembled the "gate" in a little over 4 weeks. After that I intended to stick around and take Chris' hopper class in the fall, but work back in California and the prospect of a 2 week cross-country fly fishing road trip said otherwise... I was pleasantly surprised upon returning to CA to have 3 splayed leg benches and 1 bonsai stand to build for the completion of the Yale project.

I have done a lot of joinery, but this was my first foray into compound angles and it was a great learning experience. It was not my design and there are things I would have done differently if it had been, but it was fun to not have to make any decisions-- just lay it out, cut it out and make it work and look good!

I'm not used to photographing the working process, so pardon the poor perspectives and missing steps.

The wood is all elm.

The plans I was given:





I scratched my head for a while, then figured out how to "diamond" the legs; or as I learned from Chris' writings is called "ku-se" in Japanese. I really like that this means peculiarity, as wrapping your mind around and achieving this is a peculiar task. It seemed to me easier to do this with a Kebiki and hand plane than the struggle I went through with applying it to a joiner and thickness planer. But 20 legs to make out of solid elm forced me to figure the machines out. Paul told me the story of being an apprentice in Japan and studying for the regional tests. If you were on good terms with the sensei, he might tell you the slope of the splay the night before the test, so you can developmentally determine how much out of square your stock must be, and set your kebiki ahead of time.

After achieving the correct diamond, I cut out a sample leg by hand:




I have to admit the pocket dovetail portion took a long time to figure out (notice the dovetails on this sample leg are not correct)-- the relation of the splayed leg to the dovetail pocketing in square to the bench frame was a puzzler and produced late night intoxicated forays in to sacred trigonometry:







I then set out on the jig path:





Stacking up:





I'd get that far and finish those cuts by hand, then go for the bulk of the dovetails:





and finish those by hand:





many of which were graciously executed by Crannygoat:





Mortises efficiently cut:








and on to the dovetail pockets:







and corresponding tenons and pocket:







testing:





success!:








make a big slab top:




and voila:






still waiting for a photo to come back of the benches in situ. Not shown is the bonsai stand, which is the same design but relatively square as opposed to long rectangular and without a slab top.

and here is the temple "gate" at Yale (click to open bigger):



and a poor photo of the big hari inside:






the benches seemed kinda chunky to me, but they aren't that large considering the size of the members involved with the "gate" frame. what do you all think??

-Lucas

" If you were on good terms with the sensei, he might tell you the slope of the splay the night before the test, so you can developmentally determine how much out of square your stock must be, and set your kebiki ahead of time."

Well, technically speaking, you are supposed to walk into that (old) level II test without knowing what the exact slope will be. It takes but seconds to establish the init triangle and work out all the sub units for any slope, so it really is no issue. In the first portion of the exam period, you have to produce full drawings, including a drawing of the leg diamond shape anyhow, and show those drawings to the judges before you select and cut any wood, so you would have the leg shape info as a matter of course in taking the test. All good, if you understand the method. And the rules expressly forbid bringing any pre-set bevel gages or marking gages into the exam. Not sure what to make of that tale, but it is slightly tall.

Someone else who used to work at JS in Oakland told me that Paul had said the splayed stool was the Level I exam (the hardest), however it was always the level II exam, now superseded by a new exam level II on a splayed common rafter. It's the same problem essentially, but approached with a slightly different layout technique (typically).

Nice work on the splayed bench. Joining a splayed lag to a frame in a satisfactory manner is a challenge. I would't opt for the half dovetail connection myself, being allergic to them in general, however your work came out cleanly.

Also, was looking with interest at the jig you used to trim an angled cut on the end of the legs. I'll need to do something similar myself soon with a bunch of legs. Weirdly, I have a tilting fence on my table saw, so that makes setting one half of such a jig pretty straightforward. But table saw seems like a good way to go for the ripping of tenons on the ends of legs.

Yea, to be honest I'm not sure quite what to make of many things Paul says... Good to know about how the tests really go down. Makes me think Pauls situation was much more informal and maybe a quasi-test-training just from his boss? Never really probed him on the subject.

That table saw jig was a time-saver built by Crannygoat. It works great for cutting square tenons, and then being able to tilt the upright member forward or back was very helpful. All I can say is setting the blade tilt angle in conjunction with the leg splay and out of square stock took a lot of practice pieces! I tend to figure that stuff out by process of elimination...

Shortly after that bench project I made some splayed leg saw horses where the legs were milled to trapezoids, and they slid into pockets on the horizontal member, essentially becoming dovetails. I did the best I could trying to develop all the angles in drawing, but ended up doing that pretty experimentally as well. For a moment I considered contacting you Chris, to try to confirm some theories I had on figuring out the developmental drawing method for trapezoids as opposed to squares or rectangles; unsure of where else to go for that kind of information. I still wouldn't mind running that by you if you had any interest.

In regards to developing the cross sections of splayed legs which are not conventional, even round, this was territory I discussed on my blog in 2010:

http://thecarpentryway.blogspot.com/201 ... evers.html

http://thecarpentryway.blogspot.com/201 ... rs_17.html