Craftsmanship in Wood

I've been working on an andon the past couple of days and for this version my goal was to use joinery alone to hold the structure together. After reading Chris's post on stretcher to post joinery I decided to join my andon using a version of the watari ago joint. I designed the joints so that the stretchers lapped together inside the post, where one stretcher is held down by the wedge onto the other. Hopefully the pictures will tell the story a little more clearly.

On the lower stretchers I cut the wedges back so that the screens will be able to fit in. I still have some design improvements to work out with the way the screens will be held in, but for now they will set down into the groove you can see in the lower stretchers. From there they can be pivoted into place and held in by a dovetail key in each of the top stretchers. I've yet to make the screens.

Beautiful work Jon! What kind of wood are you using?

Very nice work - looking forward to seeing the shoji panels.

Brian wrote:Beautiful work Jon! What kind of wood are you using?

Methinks its walnut.

Thanks Brian and Steve,
Steve you're correct the wood is walnut. The pictures make it look a little pinker than it is in real life. The wedges are some sort of dense tropical wood that I pulled out of a scrap wood bin, I think it's ipe perhaps.

The walnut is finished with a few light coats of shellac.

Thanks for the excellent suggestion Daruma. That's a very simple and straight forward solution. I feel a bit silly that I never thought about that method for holding the screens. Sometimes it definitely takes an outside opinion to point out the obvious especially when you get really invested in a project or design.

That's going to look great in Walnut. Excellent work Jon!

Thanks Vips!