During my time between jobs while the weather is still good, I have been taking some long walks in the parks and neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. You’re probably familiar with the “Little Free Library” book sharing trend that has been sweeping around for the last 20 years or so. Around the city I have noticed an extension of the movement that has reached into some odd areas of human existence.
Little Free Puzzle Library
This puzzle library is on a one-way street in Squirrel Hill. Sweetie made me tell her where it is so she can offload some puzzles.
Peace Rocks
This library is also in Squirrel Hill. Clearly there is a greater demand for peace than supply. I might start collecting peaceful rocks and restocking these shelves.
Dog Library
Take a stick. Leave a stick. This one has an attached annex for the peoples.
Context for the Dog Library
This two-part library is in Garfield, on a busy street. As in probably any North American City, most of the people you see out walking in Pittsburgh are walking a dog. I’ve seen some very handsome dogs.
Sweetie and I were in a fabric store a few weeks ago, and they had a selection of faux boro fabric in several colorways. I really don’t need another happi coat, but they always come in handy and are a way to add another layer to a basic outfit as the evening cools off at Pennsic. Plus, one of the colorways was “black and gold”, which fits into the aesthetic we have here in the Debatable Lands.
Happi from Black & Gold Faux-Boro Cotton
Happi were some of the first Japanese garments I ever made for SCA wear, and they are still fun to make. They have a partial lining that helps to make them very durable. They are a good use for a a few yards of fabric that would be uncomfortable or distracting to wear as just about any other garment. The pattern I use is based on Folkwear 129, “Japanese Hapi & Haori“, but I no longer really need to refer to the pattern, I can just make one mostly from memory.
I’m going to save this one probably until January, then wear it at our Baronial 12th Night event, which is the SCA’s version of a Winter Holiday party.
We have some big SCA events coming up in the Barony, and our Baronage loves recognizing people for their hard work by inducting them into our Baronial orders. Tradition has it that we give all inductees something they can use to display their membership in the order, and the one thing I can make most reliably is a “belt favor” machine-embroidered with the symbol of that order. Here is the most recent harvest from the fertile fields of my surplus fabric stash:
These are all made from surplus fabric green linen from my recent Basic Hakama project. The red comets are for martial activity, gold for service, blue/silver for arts & research, and green for “friend of the Barony”. The comet on the Order of Copernicus favor glows in the dark!
In our SCAKingdom, the basic level award for arts and research is called the Order of the Sycamore. Almost all of the trees that line our street (Shady Avenue) here in Pittsburgh are sycamores, and they shed branches all the time. When life gives you sycamore, make sycamade! Er, madellions. I mean, medallions!
I had a sycamore branch that had come down in the street in front of the house, and that I had cut up into 2-foot lengths. They’ve been drying in the garage for a couple of years, and it was time to do something with them. I cut a stack of “cookies” from one of the branches, and sanded both side of them smooth. Then, I dipped them in sanding sealer, let that dry, and sanded them even smoother. (somewhere in there I drilled them to accept a jump ring for hanging. Next, I painted the badge of the order on each cookie, and sealed the paint with a couple of coats of shellac. (Did you know that “gum arabic”, the binding agent in water paints, is not soluble in alcohol, the solvent in shellac?). Finally, I braided six cords on the marudai and hung each medallion from a cord.
The medallions themselves. Actually, this was from before the shellac
Some friends of ours who were living right around the corner from us were about to move to Portugal. They had a bunch of lumber that they had been using for storage shelves in garage, and they asked me if I wanted it. Three of the pieces were 8-foot 1-by-12s, so I decided to use them to make three brand-new “Pennsic Chairs“. After this photo was taken, I put a few coats of finish on the chairs, and later wound up giving them away to other friends.
I realize now that for as many years as I have been making these chairs, I never posted detailed visual instructions. Let’s do that now.
First, I planed the lumber smooth, and cleaned up the edges. Mark a middle line 42 inches form one end (for the seat), and 54 inches from the other (for the back).
Next, on the back piece, 12 inches up from the middle line, mark a mortise about half the width of the lumber (so, 5 or so inches), centered, and a little more than the thickness of the lumber.
Then, on the seat piece, starting 12 inches down from the middle line, mark the tenon. It should be a little less than the width of the mortice, centered, and all the way from the start line down to the end.
Using a jigsaw, I cut out the mortise. It’s best to start by drilling a hole, then cut towards the edges in curves until you can cut clean on the line.
You can use the same saw, and cut the edges of the tenon on the seat piece. These are long cuts, so take your time.
It’s easier to cut the joinery with the lumber in one big piece, but now you can cut along the middle line and separate the two pieces. Use files and sandpaper to clean up all the cut edges, and maybe round over the corners a little bit.
Test the fit by sliding the tenon through the mortise and standing up your new chair against the floor. Now all it takes is some finish and waiting.
Back when I was making the Mizuoke based on this inspiration image from Spirited Away, my attention turned to the blue apron-type garment that Lin wears in the film.
There are better shots of it in the movie. There are even some scenes where she wears it tied around her neck as a kind of halter top. It turns out that this kind of apron is called a maekake, and it is basically just a length of indigo-dyed fabric with a waistband. These are common even today in Japan, where they are sometimes seen as a kind of folk art. They will often be printed with the name or logo of the business where the wearer works, so older ones will even be sold as antiques for that authentic decor accent. Modern ones often have art or promotional designs.
I went through my fabric stash, but I didn’t have a good piece of blue canvas or heavy linen. Instead, I picked some red and yellow canvas pieces. I had enough blue linen for the waist ties, though.
I hemmed the edges to simulate selvedges. The bottom edge would have just been left raw to make the fringe, but I decided to stitch across just above the fringe to keep it from fraying too much.
Red Maekake Apron, Flat
Yellow Maekake Apron, Flat
You can see that I did my standard 4-layer waistband. I made the ties about 3 yards long so that they can go around the waist twice and tie in front. The ones you can get today in Japan appear to have special fabric woven for the waist ties that is just doubled over instead of 4-layer. Hard to tell for sure.
Red Maekake Apron, Detail of Waistband
Yellow Maekake Apron, Detail of Fringe
I might eventually paint or stamp designs on these. An escarbuncle on the red one and a comet on the gold one might be fun. I will have to figure out a good placement.
I bought a woodturning lathe more than ten years ago, but I set it up so rarely that I have not made very much progress on learning how to do anything interesting with it. There are three things that most people want to do with lathes: spindles, handles, and bowls. I will have plenty of use for spindles when I get back into making marudai, but they are not really a part of my woodworking needs. Handles don’t interest me very much because they are mostly a way for companies to sell you hardware you don’t really want to make tools you don’t really need. I don’t really need bowls, but bowls are cool, right? How hard can they be, right? They don’t have any hardware, so they won’t make you buy more stuff, right?
OK, so totally wrong on most counts. I had to buy a real chuck for the lathe so that I could start the exterior of the bowl using what is called a woodworm screw to hold the bowl blank steady. Then, of course I had to buy a special gouge, and special scrapers to cut the interior of the bowl. Then, of course I had to buy better jaws for my chuck so I could hold the size bowl I wanted to make. Also, the lathe spent so much time sitting around that I had to order a new drive belt from the lathe manufacturer because the old one was falling apart.
Anyway, bowls are still cool. A pain, and a risk to life and digits, but cool. The value of these handmade bowls justifies the hundreds of dollars I have spent on stuff to make them, right?
The first bowl is turned from some surplus ash. It is about seven inches in outer diameter and two inches tall. The foot was damaged during turning, but I just removed it with a chisel and sanded the bottom mostly smooth so it is hard to notice.
7″ bowl from Ash
I really like the way the angled grain in the blank produces those cool ripples in the finished bowl. There’s some food-safe beeswax finish on the which really makes that grain pop, I think.
Ash Bowl Exterior
The next bowl was a spectacular failure and a waste of about an hour’s work. What happened was that after shaping the exterior and switching to the inside, the scraper caught (technical term) along the rim of the interior (visible in photo) and wrenched the bowl off of the chuck jaws, breaking the foot of the bowl. Then, when the spinning bowl hit the concrete of the shop floor, the rim broke.
Failed Bowl from Cherry
I declared this bowl a loss and put it in the burn bin. It’s frustrating to spend time on something, and just look at that grain, and then throw it away, but I really could not figure out how to salvage it after so much of the foot was lost.
Too Much Missing Foot
Luckily, I had one more blank to go. This one got started at some point, then I must have had problems with it, so it wound up on the shelf. I drilled out the center for the woodworm and got started. Learning from the two earlier bowls, I left a much beefier foot on the bottom so it did not fail even when I had problems with my tooling.
6″ Bowl from Cherry
Third time lucky, I guess. I’m pretty happy with this one. No major problems, no major errors or failures, just a simple little bowl.
Cherry Bowl Exterior
I mean, you can really see how much thicker and better supported the foot is on this one. It really gave me the stable grip the chuck needed for me to work the rest of the bowl.
I feel like I learned a lot during these three bowls, including how I have been possibly mis-using one of my tools. Now I have two usable bowls, too.
I am very excited to tell you about this next project because it has been “in progress” for a very long time. Once I made the tama storage trays, I started thinking about how to keep them all together in a tidy fashion. I could just put them into drawers, or I could make them into drawers. Sweetie and I have a couple of Japanese haribako sewing toolboxes, so I could base a small chest of drawers (kotansu) on the existing trays and that basic design.
Small Chest of Drawers, or Kotansu
That went pretty well. I was able to make the carcass in a day or so. It is just pine common boards that I planed down to half-inch thickness to reduce bulk. Cutting the slots to hold the drawer supports in place was tricky, especially since I wanted to have the double-depth drawer in the lower left. There is also a not-drawer in the upper left which is actually top-loading bin with a hinged lid. I wound up cutting the lid for the bin with a traditional Japanese hand saw called an azebiki nokogiri which is designed to start cuts in the middle of a board. I bent the drawer pulls myself from brass rod. and installed them in the drawers in simple friction-fit holes. Since the carcass is deeper than the drawers, there are wood blocks behind each drawer to keep the drawer from sliding in too far.
The kotansu sat in an unfinished state for some time, until this summer when a friend of ours gave me some curly maple scants he had cut and planed for making knife handles. After cutting some of them to size to match the drawers, I finished them with shellac and glued them into place. Lining up the holes for the pulls was somewhat tricky, and fitting them closely to opening in the carcass took a lot of fine-tuning. Once the drawers were complete, I felt that the bare pine of the carcass was a bit too bright, so I gave it a light coat of wood stain just so it contrasted better with the maple.
Kotansu with open drawers
Now it looks like furniture! It is so satisfying to be able to finally call this project “done”. I made the original trays almost two years ago, and assembled the carcass about a year ago. Completing this third and final (?) phase is a big relief. I use the tools that I store in here all the time, which means I use this project all the time and having it look so much nicer is wonderful.
One of the wonderful mid-century modern things that came with the house we live in now is a “Cado Royal” wall unit in the upstairs den. This is a really great wall-hung modular shelving and storage system, but the pieces are now collectible and so it’s a pain to expand an existing installation to accommodate, say, an ever expanding media addiction. So, once I had the plant shelf all done with some cherry lumber left over, I decided to try my hand at making my own shelf.
Pieces for One Shelf
The angle-y, peggy things are the support brackets. The 45-degree dowels slide into angled holes in the wall standards. The 90-degree dowel stubs go into hole sin the underside of the shelf and hold the shelf in place. As you might imagine, accuracy of measurement and placement is vital to this system working as intended. Here is what it looks like with my new shelf added to the existing installation:
Shelf in Use
The cherry will darken over time to match the teak or whatever that stuff is that the existing shelves are made of. I think my shelf is actually nicer than the others. The existing shelves are all veneered, whereas mine is solid wood. The ends of the existing shelves don’t show any end-grain!
Here is a more recent project than some of the backlog docs I’ve been posting lately. This past Pennsic was the first Pennsic, after more than 25 years of going to Pennsic, that I was able to spend the full two weeks mostly on site. There is a basic pair of blue linen hakama that I rarely wear during the year that I got a lot of mileage out of at Pennsic. It’s a little more historical looking than the monpe I usually wear for informal use. So, I bought a few yards of this nice olive green linen to make another pair of basic hakama for informal wear.
Green Linen Hakama
They only have 3 panels per leg, two in front and one in back. This makes them lighter to wear and much lower class than the 4 panels per leg I normally make for semiformal wear. Each panel is about 14.5″ wide. The legs are 36″ long from waistband to hem, which is a little shorter than I normally make, and there is a drawstring through the hems so they can be drawn up just under the knee. I expect to get a lot of mileage out of these as well.
