u/caramelbooby

I’ve been working on a scaled down version of the first shoji in Des King’s beginner book for a few weeks now in hopes of wrapping my head around the many components that comprise a single screen. Finally glued and assembled it yesterday!!

Dimensioned via machine but everything else was hand tools (Japanese saws, chisels, gauges and my Stanley 5 1/2)! Only bought one new saw and made a point of abstaining from King’s recommended jigs just to see what I could get by without.

Not quite good enough to earn washi but I’m rather pleased with the end result given I didn’t know how the pieces I was cutting would function half the time.

Didn’t leave enough on the horizontal tsukeko for them to actually enter their mortises but I think even that would have been fine had I remembered to trim down the tenons. Thus, there are some open joints on the back of the rails and a crack on the bottom of a stile.

Not sure if I’ve ever witnessed my self improving in real time but each pull of the saw and strike of the chisel was better and more refined than the one preceding it.

Excited to try again after acquiring a few tools and making a few jigs!

Hello, all,

I’ve been gearing up to make a small shoji in preparation for making larger screens.

Desmond King’s first book has been my primary source of information for the process.

From the arbitrary frame dimensions I decided on, I’ve calculated the interval and pitch of the kumiko and milled my wood accordingly.

Only once I began to layout the joints did I realize that none of my tools enable the accurate and repeatable marking of the fractions of a millimeter that result from King’s calculus (see scan of book).

Only once in his example calculations does he omit such a fraction. All others are stated resolutely.

I’m at a bit of a loss. If you’ve found yourself here before, please let me know how you would proceed.