Today is also part of the holiday period in Japan, and it is Children’s Day. It is a day to celebrate children’s happiness and to show appreciation to mothers. The weather is nice today, so it’s a great day to go out somewhere. I worked for about half a day again today, focusing on the hexagonal boxes and making yosegi.
For the hexagonal boxes, I attached the one fixed panel yesterday, but it is still in a square shape. So today, I cut the corners at a 60-degree angle and prepared the remaining five sides to be flat for attaching the panels.Each surface is already almost flat, but for attaching the panels, it needs to be perfectly flat. I carefully adjust them while keeping the hexagonal shape, making only the minimum necessary corrections.Next, I make the panels that will be attached there. Yesterday, since it was the fixed side, I simply attached a square panel and then cut the corners to 60 degrees after attaching it. But the panels I am making today are different. These are the five panels that will be attached all at once, so the joining edges must already be cut at 60 degrees before attaching. The angle I cut today will remain as the final finished surface. The “joining edges” are the parts where the panels meet, like in the photo. Because the box is hexagonal, each panel meets the next at a 60-degree angle. Because of that, this cut cannot be adjusted later, so it has to be perfectly straight. This cutting work and panel preparation took some time, so I did not attach the panels today. The attaching process also takes quite a bit of time, so I plan to move forward with it little by little.
After this, I will move on to making the 2-sun cube puzzle boxes. I’ve also added one more item to this month’s plan: a 5-sun 10-step box with a drawer. The design will combine traditional yosegi with natural wood sheets, and the side panels will have a two-color ichimatsu pattern made specifically for this 5-sun size. I have only made this box once before, but it was very well received and sold out quickly. Most of them were sold through wholesale to shops overseas rather than directly on my site. I expect similar requests this time, so I included it in this month’s production plan. For this version, I am thinking of using walnut for the bottom panel instead of the makore wood I used last time. I will decide after checking the stock of the sheets. Drawer-style boxes are really popular 😊
https://www.japanesepuzzlebox.jp/product/323
