"Yuugou" Finished (1 Buy.com Lan pic)

That's some sick woodworking equipment!

I bet that carpet is going to suck to cleanup, after the planing is all done.

 

aren't those saws more $$ than $250

http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/indextool.mvc?prodid=MS-JS420

 

Unfortunately i wasn't able to get that saw, although it was on my list, but that saw is the fancier (#2 steel instead of #1) and bigger (270mm instead of 240mm) version of my saws which came in at around $170 US each but the difference between these and my $30 saw is immense even though the new ones are harder to cut with for a few reasons.

 

Takes an awful lot to get a jaded old thing like me out of his tree.

Even more for me to be lost for words.

Except one.

STUNNING!

Love your work/ attitude, man...

 

Tenon Tutorial

The work on this case is going extremely slowly but its definately progressing. In case you're curious, this is where the hand woodwork is being done:

This is the area of my architecture studio that i've taken over



Before i started on the joints, i found it useful to draw them up full size just so my dimensions would stay constant. Here are my two hand drawn drawing of the main joint from two different views:

This is from the top looking down:


This is from the inside front looking out towards the side:


After cutting and planning all the wood to its final dimensions, it was time to cut the wood to length and mark the peices for the tennons. To do this, i used my engineer's square and a marking knife to mark a line all the way around the peice. After that, I used my marking guage to mark the tennons themselves:




The first cuts to make are the shoulder cuts. These are the cross cut using a cross cut saw up to the line of the tennon:


Once that is done on both sides, i cut the cheek cut using a rip saw which has different teeth especially for ripping and a wider set so its easier to steer but the cut is less smooth:



After a few days, i ended up with this:



I screwed up on one of them which turned out to be about a 1/16th of an inch too small which might not seem like a lot but in order for this joint to work, the tenons need to fit quite snuggly.

That's all for today, but next will be fixing the peice i screwed up and then its on to the mortises which are a whole different animal, stay tuned.

 

This is some quality work - subscribed.

 

Looks good. real quality, yes!

 

I've been juggling with two projects going on in the same place at the same time, one being this case, the other being my stupid architecture projects, ack, school sucks but i've been working a lot on this.

I fell asleep and forgot to take pictures of a lot but its time to drill for the mortises:




A while later and they look like this:


Once i remembered i needed pictures again, i took this:
Here are the peices i have so far in various stages which i'll go over


After finishing the main mortise and tennons i realized that each joint really has two mortise and tennon joints which means i need to mortise the longer peice to accept the shorter one. its impossible to see in this picture, but the mortise for these peices is smaller than the mortise in the main post. This is so the side rail can lock into place:


Next comes the fun (and harder) part in making the tennon that locks into the inner mortise. With the cheek and shoulder cuts done, this is what it looks like compared to where its going:



The next cut is the diagonal, leaving me with this:


Into this on the flat side i need to cut a notch to lock into the inner mortise. The far side of this notch has to be right on or else the joint can move axially and therefore will be crap. Needless to say, i cut it a little oversize and fine tune it later.




When i first cut this joint, it didn't fit and i almost gave up But, i kept at it, trying to figure out more how the joint works (its bad to change critical dimensions especially when the tolerances are next to nothing) and eventually at 12 am, I finally got one of them to fit



So, a bit more fine tuning on this one and only 7 more to go but they should go faster and be of better quality. Here is the joint with the lower rail just put in to make it look like i'm further along:



I'm going to work like crazy on this this weekend so hopefully i'll have something to show for it. On another note, i'm trying to track down an Mcubed T-balancer for the fans and lighting but they seem to have been discontinued and the sunbeam one looks kinda sad, any thoughts on this?

Stay Tuned
Nick

 

After the first joint, they went a bit faster. The first one took some 3 hours to get right and i did rest of them in about 10 hours yesterday.

Here it is half done:


Close up of the bottom joint:

Its off center like that to accept the inner frame

And the top joint:


You'll see what i plan on doing with this

Here;s what the complicated part looks like


The case actually locks itself together when all 4 sides are connected:



Here are the two sides with the connecting peices. later these will be 4 panels when i finish the next part:


And Finally, Its together:


and with a scale giving element...yes, its large



Closeups:





That's it for now. Thankfully that was the hardest part of the case and its now over, the only thing left to do is tonnnnnnsssss more work, but compared to those 8 joints, it won't be too bad. Thank you and comments are welcome.

 

It looks wonderful thus far, and I applaud your dedication and patience.

I don't recall there being a mention of staining or otherwise treating the wood; what are your plans in this regard?

 

Thank you. So far for all the wood components i plan on doing a rubbed urethane finish which is the same as i used for Sangaku. This involves applying thinned urethane, sanding it while its wet, rubbing it off before it dries, sanding it dry and repeating around 4 or 5 times until it has a nise lustre and is smooth as glass. The wood i used turned out to have a light curl figure so i might try to bring that out in the finish but we will see.

 

Hey man! great wood work, i didn't see somthing like this before...

 

this is amazing i love this not really my type of case but its really growing on me now

 

very good hand craft!

Just curious: where does the anodized or painted aluminum go?

 

thank you, I decided to powder coat it actually (so far at least). Its somewhat hard to see there it will go at the moment but essentially, the aluminum is going to be a selfsupporting and self standing unit that houses all the components of the computer itself and the wood frame that i am making now will simply slide over it. The aluminum will go into grooves in the wood that i haven't cut yet.

 

wow this is amazing. Respect!
(was also a big fan of your previous case)

 

Excellent work. Very fitting of a Japanese name as its elegent and well engineered.

 

Damn, those joints are so much work but do they ever look nice...

 

Props to you with your dedication on those joints. Beautiful craftsmanship there. I love the way that holds itself together.

How hard will it be to pull apart when fully hammered together? (Not that you want to do that of course.)

 

Thank you very much. While finishing the joints, i noticed a fundamental flaw in how i planned on getting everything together and i had to trim down one of the joints in order to get it to go together. In other words, taking it apart is a bit of a pain but its definately doable. Once the first set of joints is disengaged it becomes a bit easier but i shouldn't have to take it apart too often.

On another note, i've been really preoccupied with my architecture project so i haven't done anything with the case since the last update but this weekend i plan on jumping back on it so we'll see what happens, stay tuned.