Whilst building the tea house in Japan we used a many axes and adzes. The axe that got most use was the carpenters ono, a bearded laminated axe that comes in various sizes from small one handed hatchets used for removing the waney edge of boards to large heavy versions used for squaring beams.
This is Tak at work and he could use the axe equally left or right handed to such an extent he did not know which hand was easiest.
This one is a typical felling axe.
And this is the big masekarai, the very heavy axe used for rough hewing along the grain.
Once the timber is roughly hewn to shape it is "surfaced", this can be done with a plane or the chouna or adze. This tool was not only a delight to use but it left a delightful texture on the work, if there was one tool I could have brought back from Japan it would have been a chouna. Most of those on site were old ones and there are only a couple of smiths making them now. Here are more chouna than you are ever likely to see in one place. It was a fantastic opportunity to work with many different ones to work out how they worked and what the differences were. Clearly different carpenters each sharpened them to suit their own style, generally though the outside bevel is slightly convex and the inside completely flat. This helps the adze to bounce up out of the cut rather than digging in.
Here Tani is giving us instructions on how the head should be mounted on the handle if we were ever lucky enough to acquire one.
This is how the chouna is used, the flexible handle allows very rapid strokes and the head is going into the wood then bouncing out leaving a range of very distinctive patterns depending on how it is used. This table top was textured with the chouna made by a very talented furniture maker we visited Takahiro Yoshino.
Folk from Yorkshire may now be thinking or Robert Thompson furniture but the texture from the Japanese adze is crisply cut and somehow alive. Thompsons I presume sand theirs after adzing resulting in a surface that I find very dull in comparison. I could have bought a new chouna and handle in Japan for £200-£250 but they were out of my budget and not as nice as the old ones. Thankfully on my return I have been corresponding with my Japanese friend Tomio Imaru and he is willing to search out and buy some old ones for me. I look forward to experimenting with these beautiful tools and introducing some new textures to my own work.
Whilst in Japan I used very many saws and chisels all of which were of the finest quality and not to be confused with the cheap Japanese tools available in the UK.
The saws used by Japanese carpenters typically cost £200 and chisels around £150 each. I found it quite shocking that folk would pay £150 for a single chisel and an honour to be given a set of a dozen such chisels to work with. I think nothing of spending £700 on a new chainsaw for my work though in the knowledge that it will probably last 5 years. A good set of chisels will last a lifetime and having paid that sort of money for them they do look after them. Every afternoon at the end of work all tools are cleaned and put away carefully and they are kept razor sharp. Toolmakers give lifetime guarantees and will repair, and regrind any damaged tool. If you look at the picture above you will see above the saw one chisel which has been used and ground so many times both handle and chisel are now only an inch long, I have no doubt that chisel has done £150 worth of work. Here is a typical toolroll.
Saw sharpening is quite complex so is generally left to a specialist saw sharpener but these saws do cut very well indeed. Most carpenters kept their saws in a leather roll and they typically had 5 or 6 different saws some for ripping, some for cross cut, some for cutting the grooves for sliding doors, some for finer work and some for coarser. The saw we know in the west as a typical Japanese saw is the ryoba noku pictured top, a double edged saw with ripping teeth one side, cross cut the other side and a long bamboo handle which is pulled to the side of the body. The index finger of the right hand points down the length of the handle and in using this saw I was told to think not of the point on the line just ahead of the saw but to think about the final destination of the line, this resulted in long smooth strokes and the saw stayed on line perfectly. These are the sort of joints I was cutting for the tea house so you can see a lot of sawing is involved.
My favourite saws however were the bigger coarser mibiki (pronounced my biki) saws. These are held directly in front and pulled towards you. They cut incredibly fast and efficiently.
The big mibiki or mibiki oga is fun too, it is a ripsaw used for cutting wide planks. We found it was not as fast as the European pitsaw but when you took into account the time saved by only one man working it and not having to raise the beam onto trestles it was an attractive proposition. It could be used vertically as seen here or horizontally to cut boards from a big log lying on the ground.
One last picture from the tool shop we visited at the end of the trip. Sadly most of the tools were way out of my budget but I did buy some top quality waterstones which are much cheaper than in the UK.
Japanese hand planes are simply a delight to use. When well set up and sharpened by an expert they glide through wood with little resistence and leave a surface finish second to none. The thing that impressed me most about planing wood on the kesorokai tea house project however was the way the worksite was organised on a sloping site so that gravity helped the work.
The Japanese carpenter planes not at a bench but on a beam, these beams are portable and we had several set up on the tea house work site, the beams were all sloping slightly downhill and as we worked we pulled the planes down the slope.
The obvious big difference between Japanese planes from European is that you pull rather than push them but there are other differences too. The blades are very very thick, always laminated and sharpened on a single bevel rather than with a secondary bevel. This has pros and cons, it means when sharpening a larger area of metal is in contact with the stone which means it is easier to control the sharpening and maintain a good flat bevel by hand but it takes longer to remove the metal. The Japanese deal with the latter issue by having incredibly fast cutting waterstones, more on those later.
There are other differences too, in tuning and setting up of the plane and in use. The blades are set at lower angles than typical European style planes, around 37-8 degrees rather than 45, this makes the European plane easier to use but the lower angle of the Japanese plane when correctly set up gives a far superior glass like finish.
The name of our exchange event was "kesurokai" which translates as "planing together" and the Japanese kesurokai organisation holds regular events at which carpenters bring their best planes and try to plane the thinnest most perfect shaving. A nice clean softwood beam is set up, about 5 feet long and 2" wide. Each competitor planes shavings which have to be complete single shavings the full width and length of the piece. The thinnest wins. I have seen shavings made which are much thinner than toilet paper and when placed over a page of text in a book it is easy to read through them. The thinnest winning shavings are measured by micrometer and get down to 0.05mm.
The Japanese tea house we built had a lot of planed timbers where the the European timber frame was predominantly finished with broad axes. I liked these simple supports for planing long timbers, the rough timber was marked with a snap line, rough shaped with the axe then planed. I spent one afternoon hand planing solidly for 4 hours, it was surprising how much work could be achieved and we were soon knee deep in shavings.
Planes come in many shapes and sizes, I used a set of three for planing the grooves in the main structural timbers into which the main panels of the tea house were housed. We also visited a chairmaker who used a range of small curved planes to smooth chair seats.
I did love the Japanese planes and the surface finish they produced but decent ones start at £300 each. I did learn a lot about how to set a wooden plane up well though and will be revisiting my old wooden planes collected over the years at car boot fairs.
More posts coming on saws, axes, yariganna and my favourite tool the Japanese adze.
Today I came across this video of the most wonderful wooden bridges in China and wanted to share. This is some of the most wonderful woodworking I have seen for a long time.
It reminded me of some wooden bridges I first saw on a trip round Europe 25 years ago. I revisited them this year whilst on a motorbike tour of Europe. Here they are built in the 15th century, one section is a suspension bridge built around a laminated arch and the other a lattice construction if you are ever in Switzerland I would recommend a visit to Luzerne to see them.
Having just come back from Japan I have lots of photos of our craft skills exchange to share but as a first post I thought I would share some more general thoughts answering the question everyone has asked since I got back. "What was Japan like"
Like any tourist I only saw a snap shot, a brief view of a small part of a big country. I also went with preconceptions having read much about the history and practice of traditional crafts. I went expecting to see ancient traditional life alongside cutting edge twenty first century life, maybe this is what I was expecting. Master hewer Amemiyasan chatting on his mobile whilst sharpening his axe.
I don't know why, but I was surprised to find that most of what I saw was actually neither old nor new but as in most developed countries layers of material culture with the largest proportion being from the latter half of the 20th century. What surprised me was the amount of "stuff" from the 1970's and 80's. In the UK we seem to have a very rapid turnaround throwing stuff out and replacing with new so electric appliances such as washing machines, kettles, hifi etc look very old in just 10 years but I saw plenty of such appliances that were clearly much older. Houses too seemed primarily to be from the latter half of the twentieth century.
Food was probably the biggest difference, miso soup and rice could be served for breakfast, lunch or dinner and in fact we normally had it at least twice a day. It is clearly a very healthy diet and when we came back to the UK the thing that struck us most was how fat and unhealthy looking people were. It was difficult for us to judge the age of folk in Japan because old folk seem to stay active and have good posture, no stooping with age.
I am always interested when abroad in reading the landscape. How are the fields layed out and what does that tell us about how people live today and in the past. In the area of Japan where we were I was surprised to see lots of small scale agriculture and cultivated fields interspersed amongst the housing even well into reasonably large cities. In the UK nearly all agriculture is much more mechanised, these small fields were ploughed by tiny tractors.
And of course the cereal crop was rice. No livestock so no fences or hedges.
Our hosts father in law owned one of these small fruit orchards and we stopped one morning to scrump ripe plumbs.
And these were the grapes, each bunch carefully covered with wax paper to prevent damage by the heavy rain.
One of my favourite parts of Japanese culture was the public baths or onsen fed by hot springs. The Germans and Swedes were quite at home stripping naked and jumping in a big bath together, British folk tend to be rather reserved but after a long hard days work there was nothing better. They all varied but always first thing is a shower room where you scrub down, then there are big pools at various temperatures, most have "natural style" architecture so the pool is made with lots of big granite boulders and sometimes a nice timber frame structure for a roof, sometimes completely open air. Our favourite was high on a mountainside overlooking the city lights below. It's obviously not a place to take photos but if you put "onsen" into google you will see the sort of thing.
So that's all for now, lots of photos of woodworking and gorgeous Japanese tools to follow.
Computer time is very limited in the office in Japan so this is just a quick blog. Our project is progressing very nicely, I have been primarily working on building the Japanese tea house learning how to use Japanese hewing tools, pull saws, chisels and planes all of which work quite differently to European tools. We start work at 7.30am and work till 6pm, this means that I am not just getting to try each tool but to cut many many joints with them under the watchful eye of the master carpenters. The first saw cuts were shaky and joints slow but after several days repetition things really begin to flow.
Nicola has been filming and photographing and updating the Kesurokai blog most days. For now I am just going to post one of her video clips here and for more have a look at the Kesurokai blog. This starts with me having my first go at Japanese style hewing with the large mazakari axe, afterwards one of the Japanese carpenters trying hewing European style finishing the surface with a Gransfors broad axe.
I am just wrapping things up here ready to fly to Japan first thing Thursday. I shall be busy hewing timber all day whilst there but Nicola will be busy recording, photographing, and hopefully blogging on the kesurokai blog here On Saturday I should be at the work site close to Mount Fuji with these folk, ready to start building a traditional Japanese Tea house and European timber frame building entirely with hand tools.
I have wanted to visit Japan ever since reading Soetsu Yanagi's "The Unknown Craftsman; A Japanese Insight into Beauty" the book helped me understand better the humble traditional craft that I admired and gave a sort of semi academic framework, or at least an intellectual language, to describe it. I have since learnt a lot about how traditional crafts are supported and valued in Japan through organisations such as the association for the promotion of traditional craft industries. and marketed through organisations like Edocraft
The Japanese system of valuing traditional craft also formed the model for UNESCO's 2003 convention on intangible cultural heritage.
The event we are part of however is another organisation altogether, kesurokai was set up in 1995 by highly regarded master carpenter Sugimura san as a way of exchanging skills and ensuring crafts are kept vibrant and alive. My only regrets are that we have so little time to get a taste of Japan. I would have loved to visit Mashiko and to have had time to work with my Japanese turner friend Tomio but sadly the time schedule of this exchange is tight and neither were possible. It will be a great cultural experience though I am sure and look forward to sharing photos when I am back.
As an environmentalist I try to limit my flying and this is my first long haul flight since I flew back from the USA leaving the world turning conference a day early on Sept 10th 2001, fellow conference goers took weeks to get home. Hopefully we will be back to relieve Anna who is looking after house, ducklings, dog and cat on the 22nd. The children are off to France with my parents so whilst missing out on Japan they will have a good time too.
Everyone has a rough idea what craftsmanship is but I want to delve a little deeper and see if we can pin it down. I am hoping my blog readers will help by contributing in the comments.
I recently watched a wonderful film about a guy who commissioned his dream bicycle using parts made in some of the best workshops in the world. He enthused about how he felt "there was a return to craftsmanship, people are looking for engineering excellence" and about how people wanted things that had durability and longevity. "People are looking for hard wearing beautiful components which will last".
But is quality and craftsmanship the same thing? To me most of the component manufacturers he visited whilst unquestionably making high quality goods were doing so without craftsmanship. It is possible to make quality goods using a production line, tight quality control and fancy machinery operated by brain numbed people who have no opportunity to express themselves through their work.
The nicest definition of craftsmanship I have found is this "The production and delivery
of quality goods or services from highly skilled workmen." and I found it in a rather nice essay which I would recommend. The thing to note is the skill element and when I visit any place where things are being produced I am interested in the skill element. If all the skill has been passed over to the person who sets up the machine and the person operating the machine has little influence over quality or does not have to be highly skilled then whilst the product may be good it is not craftsmanship. Lets have a look at a couple of the places that made bits for the bike, Brooks saddles are a wonderful old English manufacturing firm and one of the last firms still making bicycle parts in Birmingham which for many years was the bicycle capital of the world. I really wanted to see craftsmanship here, what do you think? Scroll to 3.50 if you want to skip the intro.
Most of the other parts of the bike were made in highly sophisticated modern factories apart from the frame which was hand made to measure welded in Stoke by Jason Rourke. The most interesting part of the build though was the wheels built by Steve "Gravy" Gravenites in California. I can't find an online video of Steve for those who can't watch the iplayer link at the beginning but here is a guy truing a wheel, when done at speed by Steve it appeared almost zen like as a small unconscious tweak here and there gradually pulled the wheel into perfect tension, very similar to tuning a piano, no question this was craftsmanship.
Why does it matter whether or not skill is involved in the process if a highly mechanised system can produce the same quality as a craftsman? Well of course in some areas of craftsmanship machines have not succeeded in replacing hand skill, making a basket for instance. In other areas I am interested in the level of skill because I feel it is through developing skills and through using our skills and having them appreciated that we develop as happy fulfilled human beings. Having visited many factories, workshops and places where things are made over the years I have always taken a keen interest in the relationship between the level of technology and the happiness and fulfillment of the workers. Unlike William Morris I have not come out as a hater of all machines but there is no question that when the skill is taken out of the job then it becomes less fulfilling. This goes for office jobs as well as making things, we need to feel that we are developing our skills, doing something useful and being appreciated for it.
Craftsmanship seems to be coming into the limelight at the moment, I recently reviewed Matt Crawford's "the case for working with your hands" and Richard Sennett's "The Craftsman" brought critical debate to the field. I welcome this as the crafts historically were rather radical, political and relevant to decisions about how we wanted to live our lives meaningfully. I think we should be looking to spend less time discussing aesthetics and more time discussing the meaning of fulfilling work.
I never answered my own question about whether Brooks saddles involved craftsmanship, From the film I have seen, I see quality, I see wonderful heritage, and nice old machinery but I am not sure I see the high level of skill involved in the production that I call craftsmanship. Maybe I will have to visit.
