19-Jun-2025
Today was another very hot day. I went out for a bit in the daytime, so I didn’t get as much work done as usual, but I focused mainly on attaching panels.
Right now, I’m working on panel attachment for the 4-sun, 5-sun, and square boxes. For the square box, which had been on hold, I finished the top and bottom panels and attached them today.
This time, I’m making three types of design variations. The “one-point yosegi” type has already been completed, and that part of the work is done. Currently, I’m working on the yosegi & walnut type and the solid wood type.
As you can see in the photo, the solid wood type uses a combination of five different kinds of wood. In the center, I’ve used a rare piece of Jindai Katsura, which is an ancient, dark-colored Katsura wood. That’s the black wood in the middle. It’s quite rare, so the width is a bit narrow..haha😅
Yes, it is certainly a rare wood, but that’s not the reason why the width is narrow. The dark wood stands out quite strongly due to its color, so I use only a small amount as an accent to avoid overpowering the overall design.
In the past, some specialty wood shops occasionally carried it, but now it’s rarely in stock. If I find a lumber dealer who still has some, I try to purchase even a small quantity—sometimes just a single board.
Recently, I haven’t made many solid wood top and bottom panels, but this time I made them to fulfill a specific order. As I mentioned in a previous post, thin solid wood boards like these can be prone to warping, but since the panels are relatively small and made by combining different types of wood, I believe the risk is minimal in this case.
