Woodworking - My First Shoji

I have always been interested in woodworking. A long time ago I bought simple cheap power tools: a router, electric hand plane and circular saw, and tried making small tables and shelves. I stopped quickly, because my work was shoddy at best, and because I realized I did not want to spend my free time in a noisy and dusty environment. My problem with power tools is that I hate the noise, so I want to finish quickly, and of course I am not careful. Then last year I decided to make a Japanese-style sliding screen (Shoji) so I bought a book by Toshio Odate, and found sites like Dick and Dieter Schmid that sell tools, and started again, this time working mostly by hand.

Wood

The first difficulty was to find suitable wood. Normally Shoji are made with fine cedar, which the local lumber yards do not have (I live near Nice, in southern France). Of the available woods, pine is too soft and spongy, oak is too brittle, so I settled on cherry. The yards here sell mostly to professionals, and normally sell a whole tree instead of individual boards. I was lucky to find a partially opened log with 3 boards (approx 2.6 meter long by 30cm wide, thickness 50mm) of acceptable quality. They were somewhat warped, but thick enough to get straight rails and stiles.

Power Tools

My only power tool is a small Ryobi band-saw. It only cuts up to 80mm, not enough for resawing boards, but sufficient for making my rails and stiles.

Hand Tools

I started with a couple of saws (Dozuki and Ryoba, Japanese hand planes and chisels, then marking tools, etc. Together this adds up to a few hundred euros.

Work details

The most time-consuming and physical part is to get the wood down to size, with square corners. After cutting the boards with the bandsaw, I started with the scrub plane to get all parts reasonably straight, then used my trying plane and kanna to obtain the final sizes.

Marking is quick, but requires a lot of care, and cutting tenons does too.

Mortises are hard! Each one takes me about 15 minutes, and there are 6 per screen.

Cutting the kumiko (lattice) is easier, but it all adds up…

The finished screen

I bought the wood in April this year, and I only finished my 3 screens at Christmas, working in the evenings and some week-ends. Looking back, I did not know it would take me this long, but I am happy with the result, and I have learned a whole set of skills. My next challenge for 2006 is a cabinet, maybe copied from this pretty model by the Garakuta Workshop.