Mame side panels
Today is the start of a new week. I finished making the 2.5-sun and 3-sun boxes that I had been working on since last week, and I checked them carefully. If everything goes well, I think I’ll be able to ship them to the store that ordered them sometime this week.
After that, I moved on to the final assembly step for the Mame puzzle boxes (14-step), which is attaching the side panels. I cut out about 320 small panels and attached them to both sides of the boxes at the same time. Since the area where the glue is applied is very small, I have to work very carefully.
Also, the panels are very thin — about 2 millimeters — so it’s important not to use too much glue. The woodworking glue I use is water-based and contains a lot of moisture. When this glue touches the wood, it’s the same as applying water directly to it. Basically, when moisture is applied to one side of a wooden board, that side swells and curves outward, while the dry side curves inward. So, if moisture touches these thin yosegi side panels, they will warp outward from the box, causing a gap between the box and the panel. This effect becomes even more noticeable with thinner wood. Because of that, when attaching thin panels like these, I use as little glue as possible and fix them immediately with rubber bands. If left even for a short time, the panels start to warp. However, if too little glue is used, the panels could fall off later, so balancing the right amount is very tricky. After spending several hours today, I successfully attached all of the panels without any problems.
Today, I also spent a little time preparing for my next project. I’m planning to make several types of 3-sun 12-steps puzzle boxes, about 50 in total.
Among them, there will be some natural wood types and some where all the outer panels are made from walnut wood. Usually, when I make the all-walnut design, I use sliced walnut veneer glued onto plywood for the top and bottom panels, and solid walnut for the side panels. But this time, since I’ll only be making about 10 boxes of this design, I decided to use solid walnut for both the top and bottom panels as well. The main reason for this change is that there have been frequent problems with the sliced walnut veneer having small damages from the beginning. I purchase this sliced walnut material from a specialized supplier, but a few years ago, issues like this started happening. I believe the cause is small defects in the slicing blades or foreign objects mixed in during the slicing process. These damages are hard to spot at first, but they show up clearly once the puzzle box is painted and finished, which is very troublesome. Once that happens, there’s no way to fix it, and I have no choice but to discard the box. Because of that, recently, I’ve been avoiding the use of sliced walnut veneer as much as possible. For some reason, this problem only seems to happen with walnut — I haven’t had the same issue with other woods. So for parts where I used to use walnut, like the drawer lids of 5-sun boxes, I now often use sliced rosewood veneer instead.
Tomorrow is a national holiday in Japan (Showa Day), but I plan to come to the workshop and do a little work.
I also plan to update this blog again tomorrow.
After that, I moved on to the final assembly step for the Mame puzzle boxes (14-step), which is attaching the side panels. I cut out about 320 small panels and attached them to both sides of the boxes at the same time. Since the area where the glue is applied is very small, I have to work very carefully.
Also, the panels are very thin — about 2 millimeters — so it’s important not to use too much glue. The woodworking glue I use is water-based and contains a lot of moisture. When this glue touches the wood, it’s the same as applying water directly to it. Basically, when moisture is applied to one side of a wooden board, that side swells and curves outward, while the dry side curves inward. So, if moisture touches these thin yosegi side panels, they will warp outward from the box, causing a gap between the box and the panel. This effect becomes even more noticeable with thinner wood. Because of that, when attaching thin panels like these, I use as little glue as possible and fix them immediately with rubber bands. If left even for a short time, the panels start to warp. However, if too little glue is used, the panels could fall off later, so balancing the right amount is very tricky. After spending several hours today, I successfully attached all of the panels without any problems.
Today, I also spent a little time preparing for my next project. I’m planning to make several types of 3-sun 12-steps puzzle boxes, about 50 in total.
Among them, there will be some natural wood types and some where all the outer panels are made from walnut wood. Usually, when I make the all-walnut design, I use sliced walnut veneer glued onto plywood for the top and bottom panels, and solid walnut for the side panels. But this time, since I’ll only be making about 10 boxes of this design, I decided to use solid walnut for both the top and bottom panels as well. The main reason for this change is that there have been frequent problems with the sliced walnut veneer having small damages from the beginning. I purchase this sliced walnut material from a specialized supplier, but a few years ago, issues like this started happening. I believe the cause is small defects in the slicing blades or foreign objects mixed in during the slicing process. These damages are hard to spot at first, but they show up clearly once the puzzle box is painted and finished, which is very troublesome. Once that happens, there’s no way to fix it, and I have no choice but to discard the box. Because of that, recently, I’ve been avoiding the use of sliced walnut veneer as much as possible. For some reason, this problem only seems to happen with walnut — I haven’t had the same issue with other woods. So for parts where I used to use walnut, like the drawer lids of 5-sun boxes, I now often use sliced rosewood veneer instead.
Tomorrow is a national holiday in Japan (Showa Day), but I plan to come to the workshop and do a little work.
I also plan to update this blog again tomorrow.
