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Joe Samalin
info@nihonsantools.com

Summer is (supposedly) coming to a close, and we hope you are all doing well. There are a number of things coming up we feel you should all know about! Any questions let us know.

• National Kezuroukai, Kingston NY, October 5-6. This annual event is coming back to New York State this year! It will feature a load of presentations and classes from top Japanese style woodworkers, and the traditional hand-planing competition on Sunday. Register now!
• Hyakkimaru Watanabe residence at BBFL in Brooklyn, NY, through September 29. Famed paper cutting artist Hyakkimaru) Hyakky to his friends) is live and in residence at the gallery in the BBFL building upstairs from Nihonsan Tools. He is doing live demos, paper plays, and selling all sorts of merchandise with his art on it. A must see!

Hyakky demonstrating his incredible kiri-e skills!

• Japan National Kezuroukai, Osaka, Japan, April 4-5, 2025. Yes, fine, it is a little far out time-wise, but a trip to Japan sometimes takes a bit more effort to plan! This is a chance to visit Japan and see Japanese woodworking up close and personal. Note the link here is to a Japanese language page. For more info you can email 2025kezuroukai@gmail.com.
• New Classes! Check out this year's new classes from Nihonsan Tools and from Make Good Traditional Handcrafts, including Introduction to Japanese Planes, Introduction to Japanese Handsaws, Introduction to Japanese Chisels, Japanese Sharpening, Yakisugi (fire finishing), Kumiko, Japanese Woodworking Project Design, Japanese Joinery, and more! 

This issue we're featuring a contribution written by one of our Brooklyn community members, Daniel Newman. Daniel's a brand new woodworker and completed his first project while spending time at his summer house in Maine.

If you have a story you'd like to share in the newsletter, please don't hesitate to reach out to me at will@makegoodwood.com. Enjoy!  

—Will O'Connor

Daniel Newman
dnlnwmn@gmail.com

Having just taken Will’s Japanese Woodworking class this Spring, and completing my toolbox before heading to Maine for the summer, I wanted to come up with a project that would keep me occupied for a while and let me use the skills I had just learned before they evaporated. I wanted something not too fancy, that could be built with mortise and tenon joints similar to those used in the toolbox. I remembered that we had a functional but ugly shelving unit in our house that could totally use an upgrade - so a bookshelf made a lot of sense. 

A little back and forth with Will, and I had come up with a design that I felt confident I could execute. Leaning on my 3D modeling experience, I put together a digital model and used that to figure out my cut list and think through the process of assembly. 2 sides with mortises, 6 shelves with tenons, thinner pieces at the top and bottom that would be glued into place and held with wooden nails (to use as braces to keep it from racking). I wanted to only use hand-powered tools, so I even visited a local antique store, to find a hand drill to drive the bit for the wooden nails.  Side note: I completely understand now why power drills exist.

With some adjustments to scale, Daniel was able to create this bookcase using mortise and tenon joinery similar to what's used in the "Build Your Toolbox" class.

We had recently added a large shed to our property, which had a finished interior and was wired for electricity but not yet connected to the power grid - for now, it was a lovely space to set up a workbench (hastily assembled from a couple of plastic saw horses and a discarded tabletop), but did mean I could only work during the day. This wasn’t terrible, as it forced me to spread the work out and give myself time to rest between sessions of what wound up being very physical work, chiseling out 36 mortises from ¾” material. I did speed up as I went, though, and got more comfortable with the process. The tenons went quicker as well, since so much more of the work was saw-based rather than chisel-based - easier to remove more material faster.

Daniel's bookcase project was made entirely with hand tools, and didn't require any more tools than those pictured above. 

The whole project took about 15 days, putting in a few hours each day. My goal was to get it all done before we headed back to New York at the end of the summer, and I finished it with a week to spare. I was able to actually enjoy the fruits of my labor for a short time before we departed. Luckily, we have other folks staying in the house over the rest of the year who will be able to enjoy the new shelves!

-Daniel