It was not particularly cold today, but the weather was poor from the morning, with heavy rain at times before noon. The humidity became very high, so I changed my plans a little. Instead of working on the boxes currently in production, I prepared for my next batch. I will be making wide puzzle boxes for the first time in a while, so I worked on getting the parts ready for them. I also fitted the drawers into the 5-sun puzzle boxes, which were still waiting for their final checks. After checking that the mechanisms moved properly, these boxes are now completely finished.
The wide puzzle box is like a 4-sun box with extra width. Its length is also slightly greater than that of a standard 4-sun box to avoid wasting the Yosegi sheets. Although the length is almost the same, the extra width makes it look much larger. I will use traditional Yosegi for the top and bottom panels again, but this time I will make new checkered Yosegi sheets for the side panels. Until now, I have used the same checkered Yosegi sheets as for my standard 4-sun boxes. However, the lengths did not match well. After cutting two side panels for the wide boxes from a sheet, I would be left with an awkward amount of material. I saved these leftover sections for the next time I made 3-sun or standard 4-sun boxes. Keeping those pieces until the next batch was quite a hassle, so this time I have decided to make checkered Yosegi sheets specifically for the wide boxes.
The photo shows the wood for this checkered Yosegi. I have glued together ten boards in total, using two kinds of wood. However, making the sheets in the same dimensions as before would leave me with awkward-sized leftovers again. I want each sheet to provide enough material for two side panels for the wide box: one long panel and one short panel. The four-color checkered sheets I sometimes make are too long for this, while my usual two-color sheets are slightly too short. So this time, I decided to make the two-color sheets a little longer. One way would be to make each square in the pattern larger. That would make both the pattern and the sheet larger, but I prefer smaller squares, so I decided to add two more rows instead. I mentioned ten boards earlier, but I normally use eight for my two-color checkered pattern. Adding two boards—one of each wood—will make the finished sheet longer. Next, I cut this glued stack into slices about 5–6 mm thick, then glue twelve slices together to form a block. I then arrange four of these blocks side by side and glue them together. In this arrangement, the height of the original ten-board stack becomes part of the length of the finished sheet. With four blocks joined together, the sheet will be about 4–5 cm longer than the version made with eight boards. This length will be too long for a standard 4-sun box but too short for a 5-sun box, so for now, these sheets will probably be used only for the wide boxes. The two woods I am using this time are Hō (Japanese Magnolia) and Walnut.
