Craig kicked off our May meeting by thanking Don Naples, John Schmidt and Arnie Champagne for staffing the Santa Clara Wood Working show full time. He also thanked a number of volunteers who also came and helped out. Don demonstrated his Lap Sharp, John turned pens and Arnie demonstrated woodworking techniques and offered $30 off from his classes if the person joined BAWA ($30). Way to go, Arnie. Also, around 375 BAWA fliers were also handed out.

Stan Booker brought a whole lot of books that were donated to him. They were offered for a dollar with the proceeds going to the club. Tony Fanning talked about the Rebuilding Together project at the Meals On Wheels warehouse in San Francisco. There were 20 to 25 of our members with hammers in hand ready to build cabinets and shelving. There were also about 40 high school students who with no woodworking experience were able to follow directions and were doing things correctly even with no instruction. A nice "Thank You" note was received from the Meals On Wheels folks. There were a number of guests whose names are lost since they did not return the information sheets I asked them to fill out. We do have 2 new members David and Kathleen Brandt of Milpitas. A big welcome to them.

Show & Tell

Andy Grose showed and talked about clarinet reeds that he has made. Serious musicians make their own and the work is labor intensive. Argentine bamboo is the material of choice. It is split into four pieces with a tool. Then the concave side is made flat usually with a jig and a block plane. The sides have to be trimmed and a tool used to make the curve. It is a very labor intensive so Andy came up with a small planer to speed things up. He also uses double stick tape on his finger to sand on a horizontal disk sander. The success rate on the reeds is about 80%.

Main Presentation -- Jay Van Arsdale

Jay grew up in the coal mining area of Kentucky where his family was in the blacksmith business. This background became useful later when he learned Japanese joinery after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. He saw a demonstration of Japanese joinery by Daiku Makoto Imai with whom he studied for many years. His teacher intentionally taught him 80% and left him to figure out the remaining 20% on his own. Initially, he didn't think he could learn these woodworking skills because he was not Japanese. But 30 years later, he comments "Just do it."

Jay has taught at the Japan Woodworker since 1980. In addition, he teaches Traditional Japanese Hand Tools at Laney College in Oakland. He has traveled extensively to Japan and mentored visiting craftsmen coming from Japan to the United States. He has established a strong personal relationship with Utiki, a 73 year old tool maker from Japan who makes his tools on a 13th Century forge. Utiki forges his blades in the same tradition as the Samurai sword makers of yesteryear. Utiki visited Jay and gave a workshop at the Sausalito Boatworks. Jay helped Utiki to build a Japanese building and a replica of his forge on the property of a friend here in the Bay Area. Now this friend is going to Japan to work with Utiki for one month.

Other groups of Japanese carpenters, temple builders and craftsmen have come to the US in recent years to share their knowledge with a public increasingly interested in their expertise. It is curious for them to receive so much attention here because they think of themselves as simple carpenters. Their skills follow a simpler sense of things, a philosophy of using natural materials joined in a way to absorb the movement of earthquakes without breaking. Port Orford Cedar is the material of choice. The buildings are designed to last as long as it takes the tree to grow.

Jay became friends with a Kyoto sharpening stone merchant whose family mined sharpening stones. Jay has amassed a collection of stones that he uses to sharpen his tools. He works almost exclusively with hand tools, using power tools only to mill the wood. Jay hand planes beams with a Japanese plane that is over 8" wide. He makes his own planes, preferring pepperwood as the best American wood and Japanese white oak from the tree's limbs. One of his planes uses a blade made of pre-1939 Komagi steel. He met the man who forged and formed this blade when he visited Jay in the United States. Jay conditions the base of his wood planes with a little scraper. First he checks the flatness of the plane sole, paying particular attention to the gliding surfaces at the front of the plane and just in front of the blade. Japanese planes work on the pull stroke and will burnish the wood. Before planing wood, Jay applies oil onto the wood. He uses Bioshield because it will not raise the grain. The oil conditions the wood, easing the planing. He sets his planes at 35 degrees.

Today most of the water stones are fabricated and the old sedimentary rock mines in Japan are closed. The mines were active up until just a few years ago and went as deep as two miles underground. Fabrication permits stones to be made more consistently and uniformly. However, the grit designations have no standards so an 1800 stone of one make may be rougher than a 2000 stone of another make. Jay has tried many stones and now uses what works for him.

Jay emphasized that good tools must be sharp. Sharpening requires a sequence of going from rough to progressively smoother, finer grit stones. The rougher stones of the mid range, 1200 (Bester) to 2000 (Oshima or Kyoto) grit, must be soaked in water prior to use. Yet the stones should not be left in water for an extended period of time because they will get soft. It is essential that the stones be flat. The finer stones of 8000 grit, such as the Kitiyama Mountain Stone are used for polishing the tool and need only a surface application of water. He checks for stone flatness by examining the water sheen or glaze on the stone. If it is uniform, the stone is flat.

He likes the King waterstones and has recently tried the new Shapton stones. He recommends them highly. This series offers stones from 1000 grit to 30,000. Jay says you can do the job with two stones, the 2000 and the 8000. The softer, Nagura stone is used to create a slurry on the harder stones. The slurry will facilitate metal cutting.

Jay commented: "If I don't sharpen something every day, I get squirrelly."

Jay's sharpening technique is to stand with the stone in front of him, mounted on a board, lined up just above his navel, "the Omara Point". Here everything lines up and repetitive arm movements are facilitated. He starts with the flat side, looking at the scratch pattern and the reflected light. He holds the chisel on the diagonal. As he moves the blade back and forth, he listens to the sound it makes on the stone. He learns his stones, modifying his sequence to pair the cutting characteristics of the stones. When he creates a burr, he goes to the next finer stone. He uses a 30X magnifier from Radio Shack to check the blade surface. He can sharpen a chisel or plane blade in two to three minutes.

During the break, many members rushed to take advantage of the 10% discount offered by Japan Woodworker to buy sets of new sharpening stones.

The meeting ended with the nameless winners of the door prizes hauling their "loot" while balancing the new sharpening stones on their heads back to their cars vowing to learn Japanese in their spare time.