The weekend was supposed to bring a bit of relief from the heat, but that hasn’t happened at all — the hot weather continues as before. It’s rained a little, and the humidity has gone up, making it more muggy and uncomfortable. On days like this, I can’t do detailed work, so I was glad it happened to be the weekend.
The 3-sun 12-step mechanism box is complete, and the photo shows me opening and checking the final mechanism. This time I applied the paint a little more heavily, so the sticking of the mechanism parts is more pronounced. Because of that, it took longer than usual to open. So far there’s no way to prevent this sticking — whenever you paint a Japanese puzzle box, the mechanism parts inevitably stick and stop moving. I open it at the very end, but the way I do it isn’t through brute force — there’s a bit of a knack to it. This is a method unique to me, and I don’t know how other craftsmen go about opening theirs.
Basically, a himitsu-bako (Japanese puzzle box) is painted twice, but the part that sticks the most is the slide key section. After two coats of paint, this part sticks very badly and is hard to get moving, and if you force it open there’s a risk of damaging it. So for this part only, I move it once during the undercoat (the first coat of paint). That way, by the time of the second coat, it’s effectively like it’s only been painted once, so it still sticks, but it’s much easier to open.
This troublesome sticking caused by painting can’t be completely prevented, but it can be eased. First of all, it helps not to apply the paint too thickly. Since spray painting became the standard method used today, it’s been standard practice to paint himitsu-bako more thinly than other yosegi products. After all, the thicker the paint is applied, the stronger the sticking becomes. This used to be common knowledge, but as the years have passed and paint workshops are now run by the sons of the old craftsmen, many people no longer know this. Since a thicker coat of paint looks more beautiful, some painters apply it thickly in order to show off their painting skills, and as a result there have been cases where this ruined the himitsu-bako (the sticking was so severe that it couldn’t be opened, and it ended up damaged). So these days, I no longer ask anyone else to do this painting for me.
Some of you may already know this, but himitsu-bako were originally a craft item that wasn’t painted at all. That said, if you leave the wood completely untreated, the surface quickly gets damaged and dirty, so a method called ‘rōbiki’ (wax-rubbing) was used. This involves rubbing wax over the entire surface of the box. It has the same protective effect as paint. What’s more, this method has the added benefit that the wax soaks into the wood’s interior, which improves the movement of the box’s mechanisms. However, this requires a great deal of labor, so it wouldn’t be suitable for producing large quantities the way we do now, and also in terms of appearance, it doesn’t have the shine, and it’s not as beautiful as spray painting. If I ever get the chance, I’d like to try it once myself 😊
