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10th August 2014, 04:47 PM #1Retired
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- May 2012
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Making Japanese wooden nails? Any clues?
I've become interested in making japanese wooden nails for a new project.
They are sold, but they are heinously expensive e.g: Wooden Nails | Japanese Tools ... this puts them well out of my budget.
Anyone have any clues as to how these might be made accurately, cheaply, reliably and perhaps in some automated fashion? jig with a belt sander? some sort of magic-feeder on a lathe?
I can work out how to make them one-by-one in a laborious manner, but I want to get this down to 10 seconds, not 3 minutes. Zing, zing, zing!
For those who haven't seen them, they are 35 to 90mm long, tapered and straight grained. A tapered drill is used to make the hole, then the tapered nail is inserted with a mallet. It acts (from what I can tell) as a draw bore, as well as ensuring a very tight fit at the face. A trim saw then, er, trims, it flat to the surface. Very neat.
There seems to be close to zero on the web about them.Last edited by Evanism; 10th August 2014 at 04:48 PM. Reason: getting the facts right....
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10th August 2014, 05:05 PM #2
I would make up a pencil sharpener type arrangement with a Stanley plane blade. Put a piece of dowel in the battery drill chuck, taper, cut to length, taper the next bit, cut to length, etc.
Check Mathias Wandle's site. He made up a similar thing to make accurately sized dowel. I'll see if I can find it....
Making dowels - the pencil sharpener method
Found it.Those were the droids I was looking for.
https://autoblastgates.com.au
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10th August 2014, 06:01 PM #3
Vague memory of another thread on here somewhere about them. I think they were toasted bamboo or something. So maybe do a search on here. Or maybe search "bamboo nails"?
anne-maria.
Tea Lady
(White with none)
Follow my little workshop/gallery on facebook. things of clay and wood.
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10th August 2014, 07:17 PM #4
Toasted bamboo! Sounds...not all that yummy, actually...
I was going to suggest the Wandell sharpener, too!
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10th August 2014, 07:32 PM #5
How important is the piece you're going to make? I've always found that compromising on things like the wooden nails leaves a feeling of "shoulda bought those". Three bucks a nail doesn't seem to be overly expensive.
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10th August 2014, 07:42 PM #6
My Mrs has just come up with a good idea. Japanese chopsticks are round and could be cut to length as required! They must be Japanese chopsticks though. They are the round ones, Chinese are not.8 I'm sure you can find a cheap source of plain wooden chopsticks.
Regards,
Rob
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11th August 2014, 01:27 AM #7Retired
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- May 2012
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- Canberra
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A solution?
I was laying in bed, letting the old brick rest, when Eureka!
How about this:
- cut stock into 1/4" wide (or appropriate size) rods on the table saw or bandsaw.
- cut the rods into Desired Length plus 1/2"
- mount the length into an electric drill
- use my big home made lathe sanding disk on a sensible speed
- drill on, angle set, press to sanding disk
- riches!
Another thought would be to drill a bit of stock with the right sized hole, cut through it on an angle like a pencil sharpener and mount that as a jig against the sanding disk. As I insert the rod (drill a-buzzing) it will force the rod to the right angle and give me a stop for length too.
I'll give it a crack tomorrow.
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11th August 2014, 02:07 AM #8GOLD MEMBER
- Join Date
- Apr 2011
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- McBride BC Canada
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- 2,999
I never knew that they were supposed to have a name and be exclusively from one country!
Besides plain bamboo chopsticks, I use 3 different sizes of bamboo meat skewers.
Regular drill bits, cylindrical holes, the flush-cut saw, as described.
Umbrella stands & pirate's treasure chests, they nail together just fine.
The bamboo makes really nice accents in the darker western red cedar.
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11th August 2014, 08:22 PM #9
I peg a lot of furniture together , English style riven trenails is what I think of them as . The Egyptians must have started it though ?
I like the look of those tapered drill bits to match .
In the old days they were split off a block with a riving iron then hammered through a dowling plate , if you need a taper to help start them in the hole , four downward slices with a chisel.
When I need them I just pick straight grained timber, saw 500mm lengths on the table saw , group them together in rectangular packs with a wrap of tape around one end. Then when I need them I saw the length I want off on the band saw and hammer through the dowling plate.
Somethings I assemble have 40 pegs , I sure wouldn't want to be buying them in .
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12th August 2014, 03:25 PM #10
I was reading this just the other day.
TTLearning to make big bits of wood smaller......