Springtime and Japanese Joinery

The last two days have been cold and wet, but before that we had a good week of beautiful Aussie springtime. Nic and I had all kinds of fun playing around in the yard. Here he is on the billy cart, preparing himself for a run on the slalom course we set up with old grape crates.

Simon and I went into Wangaratta on Monday to get some supplies. We had some time to kill while his car was getting fixed, so we walked around town. Above is a sculpture of Simon's that is installed in the park there. It won a competition a few years back, and earned its place in the park facing the billabong (the Aussie name for an ox-bow lake). He made it from an old boat frame he found at the salvage yard. Below are some pictures of spring in bloom. The first is a bottle-brush flower, which I am told is in the acacia family. And the second is some sort of gum tree. All eucalypts have those conical buds with a little cap that pops off when it blooms.

Well, now we're down to the good stuff. Here are some pictures of the progressing kitchen cabinetry. First, we ripped down a bunch of old Murray Pine joists into strips, which we laminated together for the countertops. Here is one of them all glued up and clamped (with every clamp Simon owns, plus a few he borrowed).

Here you go, Uncle Bert (and anyone else who's interested). This is my joinery workstation with the tools of the trade: Saws (crosscut on the right, rip on the left behind the mallet); chisels and mallet; shoulder plane; tape measure; engineer's square; pencil; clamps and bench vises. It is set up for the cutting the lap joint that is pictured below.

Here are a couple examples of the joint that I've been working on for the last couple days. It is a modification of a Japanese dovetailed lap joint. We're using it to join sections of the base of the cabinet frame. It takes a lot of careful measuring, cutting, chiselling, checking, chiselling, tracing, more chiselling, etc. But I really get into it, and the hours just fly by.