The yae-ura-hana-kikko pattern
The summers here in Tokyo are brutally hot, and one thing that’s been on my mind for a while has been to make a kumiko screen to cover one of the windows in our apartment where the sun comes blaring in. I also recently purchased some ha-ganna blades (the specialty kanna used for cutting kumiko pattern pieces) and I wanted to put the ha-ganna to use for a pattern called 八重裏花亀甲 (yae-ura-hana-kikko).
I documented most of the process of making this screen in the video below.
Here are the ha-ganna below, at some point I will do a blog post on how I went about setting these up. Each blade is shaped to a specific angle commonly used in kumiko patterns. From left to right are 22.5, 30, 45, and 60 degree angle blades.
Here I’m using the 60 degree ha-ganna to mass produce the angle cuts for making the hexagonal pieces in the yae-ura-hana-kikko pattern.
The technique here is to make the cut so that it just almost goes through the kumiko strip but not all the way. That way you can cut the strips to length, and fold them to create the hexagon. The tiny little bit of wood that is connecting each segment keeps them together such that assembly is much easier.
This was the first project that I used ha-ganna on, and I can’t imagine doing anything on this scale without these specialty planes. Even with the ha-ganna it took hours and hours to assemble all these parts, and insert them into the panel. That said, the ha-ganna weren’t nearly as hard to use as I had expected. After the initial adjustment of the blades to dial in the correct cutting angle, they were pretty straight forward to use.
There’s a lot to talk about with the ha-ganna so stay tuned for more info in a future post. Thanks for stopping by.
Beautiful! What a clever idea. You are so talented!
Are there four individual panels?
Thank you! There is just one panel. I wanted to make a pair of panels that could slide and open but I can’t modify the existing window sill, so one panel that hangs over the window was the least invasive way to go.
Nice work there…hard to get the ha-ganna here and very costly as I’m sure you know…I guess you have to move to japan to get the good stuff 🙃
For sure ha-ganna are costly, but for production work there is really no substitute.
Hey! Im so lucky to run into your blog, I am from Chile so you would imagine how little info I can access to the ha-ganna. I just read all your entries, what a journey, and how brave of you to try these complex kumiko projects without even having touched the original planes.. There is so much I could say, but it all sums into: RESPECT! I will be looking for the ha ganna blades (if you have a link I would appreciate it so much) and try to make them for my projects, I ve been curious about this mythical planes for so long… thank you for sharing every part of your process 🙏🏾🙏🏾
Hey Felipe, Thanks for the kind comment! Here is a link to the site where I got my ha-ganna blades.
If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you should see the ha-ganna blades. Good luck with you kumiko work!
Take care,
Jon