2011-2012 Update... Exciting News!

Again its been about a year since my last posting.  And again I have completed few if any projects.  During the winter break I was in a brief fervor of creativity, designing and dimensioning lumber for a new shoji lamp.  The idea was inspired by a good friend of mine whose studying electrical engineering.    He fabricated a standing lamp made with PVC and sewn cloth, where the main appeal was the programed LED lighting system.  These expensive little lights could be set up with a computer chip to give a mesmerizing light show.  My design was focused on using that lighting system while being incased in a Japanese style shoji lamp with a "Fibonacci Twist."  I wanted the kamiko, or lattices, to  divide the screen using the Golden Ratio, a famous sequence used in many classical designs.  Sadly, my creative drive to build something was sidetracked with the Winter quarter demands.  As a result, I have another project put on the back burners.

Late one night, toward the end of my Spring quarter, I was googling "carpentry apprenticeships available in the United States," while procrastinating working on my senior thesis. About every three to four months I do this search just to entertain myself with possible openings with Japanese carpentry companies like Takumi Design, Eastwind Inc., or Joinery Structures. For the past 2 years not much would turn up.  However, this June I was astounded to see on the 5th page of the google search, a link came up titled, "Zen Joinery Apprenticeship."  To my pleasant surprise it was an 8 month program being offered through the San Francisco Zen Center where participants would study under Paul Discoe, founder of Joinery Structures and ordained Zen Buddhist Priest.  Every other Saturday, the class would meet at his Oakland shop to learn everything from design, layout, wood preparation, tool care, cutting of joints, and assembly.  At the end of the program is a two week intensive workshop held to complete an entry gate at the Tassajara Zen Center, with food and lodging accommodated.  The whole Apprenticeship has a tuition cost of $1400 and only 8-10 spaces available.  To me, I instantly see this as an opportunity of a lifetime, just the kind for which I have been waiting for and apply right away.  And after a month of going through an interview of sorts and exchanging emails, I am very proud to say I am a core member of the Zen Joinery Apprenticeship program.   I have committed to spend every other Saturday for the next 8 months in Oakland learning exactly what I want to learn.  I see this as a tremendous opportunity to gain valuable experiences under a master of the trade.  

My first class starts this Saturday with an emphasis on design.  Our homework has been to read several books like Japanese Homes and the Surroundings, Zen Architecture and various books on understanding wood and how it behaves.  Hopefully, I will find the time to give updates on my progress with the apprenticeship.  Stay tuned... there should be more in the next few weeks.  

2010-2011 Update

Well, its been a year since my last post and despite the fact that I have made little to no progress on the biambo project, a lot has happened.  I have survived another year of Mathematics at UCSC and only have one more to go until I receive my bachelors.  So close, so very close....   Yet, while working as a full time student I have also spent many weekends building my skills and feeding "wood," so to speak, to fuel my passions to create something useful and beautiful.  

Many Sundays I have commuted with my good friend Joe up to Oakland to volunteer to build the Jay's Fence Project at Lake Merritt.  Some finished pictures as well as its construction can be seen through the following links.  

http://gardensatlakemerritt.org/gardens/japanese-garden/

http://www.daikudojo.org/Archive/200809_japanese_garden_fence_and_gate_project/

Other weekends have been spent participating in the Matsuri Cherry Blossom Festival in San Jose and a small demonstration at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.  Its good to support the craft.  

On my last week of school before finals,  my friend Joe and I had the privilege to do a Japanese Timber Framing workshop in Ashland, Oregon.  This unique experience gave us the opportunity to work under Robert Laporte from Econest and Dale Brotherton, a master Japanese carpenter from Seattle.  For nine days we would work 9 to 12 hours, building the entryway made out huge port orford cedar timbers.  The following links show some great images of this amazing experience.  

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?facebook=true&sourceId=984136008703

http://www.econesthomes.com/japanese-timber-framing-slideshow/

My summer has mostly been spent working with two local handymen in Santa Cruz.  Its a been a soft introduction to the work I would be doing as a carpenter.  One has had me help him repair his old camper top to a truck, the other is having me help him build a green house.  

Fortunately and unfortunately, most of my paychecks have been consumed for building up my own personal workshop.  I recently purchased a Delta 10" Contractors table saw and a Hitachi Jointer/Planer F-1000A combo.  These are the tools needed to square up my lumber.  Technically I feel I can and should do it by hand, which safer, better exercise and more educational.  However, I also feel it is important to become familiar with these tools as they will be heavily used in the kinds of professions I'm interested in.  

Lately, I have been using my new tools to square up some stock for making some saw horses and a mobile clamping bench.   Today they were used for surfacing some old growth redwood boards that will be used to make some adirondack chairs for my mom.  

Hopefully my next post will have more pictures and will be sooner than a year.

Biambo Project

About a year and a half ago I was commissioned to build my friend Yanik a Biambo, or three panel room divider. The main attraction to this project was its use of branches to divide the empty spaces inside each panel.  The wood framing the panels would be connected by japanese joinery and contrasting in color.  I agreed to work for free as long as my friend payed for the materials and I had no time constraint.

For a week I worked on the design of the frames which is made up of verticle styles and horizontal railings.  Here is a photo of what they look like on Google Sketch Up.  I wished I had used this system from the start.  Most of my drawing were coming from graph paper and pencil.

Each panel is about 6 feet tall by 2 feet wide.  Once the design was made I took my friend to Southern Lumber to look through various wood options.  We both were very interested in using Lacewood for the styles and maple for the railings.  However Lacewood would not be sold in the dimensions we needed and maple is a pain to work with.  So we turned to the next best thing and used Walnut and Alder, both of which are pretty, relatively easy to work with and best of all... affordable.  I got the wood at Jackals in Watsonville.  

The next step was to cut and square up all the lumber.  Being the novice woodworker that I am, I bought  just enough wood to barely make all the pieces that I needed.  The problem with this is that wood moves after you cut it and is often times unusable.  You want to buy more than you need so you're ready for the ones that don't come out right.  The other problem was I don't have the power tools like the joiner, planer and table saw needed to square up the lumber.

Luckily, my friend, Manny, from the class I take up in Oakland offered to help.  His shop was by far the coolest personal workshop I had ever seen.   All I had to do was tell him the dimensions I needed and he ran them through his monster tools.  Im telling you he had a joiner, band saw and table saw that could run full size timber.   It was amazing!

Anyways, after everything was cut, we could clearly see some pieces bowed.  My friend told me if I had looked for straighter grain that wouldn't have been a problem.  Oh well, you learn from your mistakes I guess. The good news was that I could still use them, I just had to be clever in orienting them in the design.

Two days later I had finished drawing all the layout lines I would need to follow for chopping the mortises and cutting the tenons by hand.  I would need to chop and cut 18 mortise and tenons with 36 wedges.  Probably my biggest job on the project.  One year later, I can now say that task is complete.  I had finished one panel  a while back but had since been distracted with things like school and work.  Two month ago I had finally finished paring out all the mortises to fit the wedges so I could then plane the pieces smooth and take off any layout line or power tool mark.  Another one of my friends from class, Joe, offered to help assemble the last two panels.  Yanik helped too which was nice.

The coolest thing about this project would be the use of negative space with wild branches.  For two years I have been searching to find the right ones.  They had to have a very "organic" look with lots of twists and turns but it also had to be flat.   This was the hard part.  We originally planed to use curly willow yet later decided that it wasn't what we were looking for.  Japanese Maple was a close contender but was too weak once it dried out like the curly willow.  Manzanita has an excellent natural line that we wanted and it would be strong but wasn't 2-dimensional.  However, after finding some in Wilder Ranch we could not resist not using them.  Their electric twists made them look like lightning bolts, a perfect work of art that had to framed.  Here is a picture of what they look like resting in the panels.

My next tasks are to find a way to hinge the three panels together then have the branches secured into the frame without damaging the styles or railings.  Once that is done I will look into a way to fill in the bottom frames.   We were thinking of framing some nice wooden boards with an interesting grain.

I apologize for not documenting this project through all its stages.  I wish I had taken more photos of the process.  Next blog on this will have more illustrations.  Thanks for reading.

My Box of Joints

Every once in a while I would bring in a box of wooden joints to this K-8 school I worked at.  It was funny because every time I say to a kid or fellow worker, "Want to see my box of joints?" Id get this silly stare.  Yes, I do live in Santa Cruz and that is a common thing around here so I understand their concern.  But to everyones relief they would discover it was actually just wooden joints that work like fun puzzle pieces.  Each week I would bring in a new challenge for them to try and open or put back together.
  

Below are a few of my favorite joints that I learned from a class I take up in Oakland every weekend (more on that in later posts).

This joint is properly called "Hakosen tsugi" or "L-shaped dadoed and rabbitted scarf lap joint" for those of you who don't speak Japanese.  I made it out of Port Orford Cedar which is my favorite type of wood because of its work-ability, beauty, strength and smell.

This is a more simple scarf joint called the "Kanawa tsugi" or "Half blind tenoned dadoed and rabbitted scarf joint"

This is one of the hardest joints I learned in my class, its called the Rising Dove Tail.

This one is probably the kids favorite.  Its just a bunch of bridal joints with a half lap in the middle.  I will be posting many more pictures of joint experiments in the future.  Thank you for visiting and please stay tuned for my next post.