Finishing up the Shojis

Well I’m long overdue for an update here and for a final post on the shoji screens. A lot has happened over the past several months, and the biggest news of all is that I have moved to Japan! Big Sand Woodworking in now in Tokyo! It feels a bit surreal and hard to believe but my wife and I made the move, we are here, and looks like we’ll be here for a few years. One of my goals while I’m here in Japan is to meet as many woodworkers and crafts people as I can, and to learn as much as possible about Japanese woodworking straight from the source. I am going to share as many of those experiences as I can here. So stay tuned for some updates from Japan!

In the meantime I want to share the final details from the shoji screen project. This project involved making two sets of screens for two separate buildings. The main difference between the two sets is that one set of screens all have simple flat panels at the base of each screen while the other set all have a more detailed raised panel.

I left the last two posts for this project with the completion of the kumiko grids and the joinery for the rails and stiles.

So with those parts being nearly complete, the next step was to make the panels. I didn’t take photos of the flat panels since the details on those are pretty basic. The raised panels though required a bit more work. I had to make eight of these, and the first step was to make a router template for the raised pattern. Below I’ve clamped the router template to a panel, being careful to position it exactly where it needs to be.

Then I ran the router with a flush trim bearing bit around the edge of the template.

With the outline of the raised portion complete, I then needed to bring down the remaining material around the routed portion to complete the raised panel. I did that by running each panel on edge on the table saw. Sorry I don’t have pictures of the process. I did the table sawing very carefully and left the remaining thickness slightly fat so that I could fine tune the fit of each panel with hand planes. Below are the hand planes I used to finish off each panel. That little pair of rabbet planes came in super handy for finishing the recessed part of each panel.

Here’s a detail shot of the raised panel after a little chisel work.

And a finished planed and completed panel. This Alaskan Yellow Cedar just glows when it’s finish planed.

With the panels complete, the final step before glued up was to finish plane all the rails and stiles. This is one of the most enjoyable parts of the process for me. Especially when working with Alaskan Yellow Cedar.

And then it was time for gluing up. This is always a stressful process for me and usually completely zaps my energy. This time though things went really well, and it was a more manageable process since I only needed three clamps per screen. Since all the parts were finish planed, and that was the final surface, I did my best not to use excess glue and cleaned up any squeeze out right away with a damp rag.

All in all things came out pretty sweet.

And then it was install day! I won’t go into great detail into the process for installing the shoji screens, mainly because while I was installing them I had limited time and couldn’t take detailed photos of the process. But below you can see the site as I was installing the first set of screens. While the screens were going in we were also busy fitting a set of new shutters (amado), which you can see behind the installed shoji below.

These screens didn’t actually get a paper backing as most shoji screens do, instead they ended up with brass bug screen, allowing a lot of natural light through. (all these pictures were taken before the bugs screen was installed.)

And here are a couple shots of the other set of shoji screens with the raised panels.

Well that’s it for the shoji project. This was a fun one, and I really learned a ton from the amazing people I got to work with. It was also great to do a larger production run of shojis as it allowed me to really hone my skills on the various processes involved in making and installing them.

Thanks for following along on this project, and stay tuned for some updates from Japan!