Ishido Kanna in Inomoto Dai

I haven't made any progress lately outside due to health and weather. After an inquiry a few weeks ago about a kanna (Japanese hand plane) on Iida Tools website, a found myself in the process of a purchase. Iida Tomohito was very helpful in obtaining information and helping me secure a purchase of my new tools. These are the first new tools I have purchased directly from Japan, and my first new kanna. The blades are forged by Ishido Hideo and his son Ishido Yoshitaka. Ishido Hideo passed a few years ago and this may not be his "best" blade but I am proud to own even one of his lower lines of blades. The blade by Yoshitake looks to be every bit as fine. The blades are both 70mm Blue Steel #1 with laminated chipbreakers and carry the name "Tonchinkan"(I have no idea what that means). The blades were not yet set in a dai yet, so Iida-san politely asked if I didn't mind waiting a week to have them set. My blades were then sent to Inomoto Isao a daiya shokunin in Sanjo. They were both set at a standard 8 bu (8/10 or 38.5°) as recommended by Inomoto-san per my description of the softwood I plan to plane. Both dai are oimasame grain pattern and have tsutsubo. It is hard to express the exceptional quality of the dais, as the soles came "pre-tuned" and are just perfect as can be. I would like to thank Iida-san, Inomoto-san, and Ishido-san for putting these fine tools in my hands, which will help me put together a home. The photos show the Ishido Hideo blade on the left and Yoshitaka blade on the right (the blue pictures are the ones Iida-san sent me). The end grain shows both of Inomoto-san's stamps.

Milling Juniper Again

Made progress on the log pile over the weekend and afternoons this week. I am down to the last 7 logs in the pile I had cut. I milled somewhere around a dozen logs over the weekend, using my last sharp bandsaw blade. I resawed the 30+ flitches left from the posts and still have some sharpness left in the blade. I took a rare break and went fishing with my brother on Sunday evening. I haven't been fishing in at least 10 years, and it was nice to be out on the water. I took some photos of an interesting tree I cut down. The tree had exposed heartwoood on two sides. The sapwood was divided into two seperate sections all the way up to the limbs. I made a nice stack of posts and lumber that is nearly as tall as me (i'm not very tall). I rolled my last 7 logs down to be milled when the rain clears. I have been having problems with insects boring into my bark/sapwood, so I am trying to hurry through these logs before really warm weather.

Milling Persimmon Again

Finished up the butt log of the two persimmon logs I got out of the tree. There is a third top section still waiting to be skid to the mill. The log was around 14" small end, 16" big end before milling, and 17' long. The widest board is 14" and all is milled to 1x dimensional lumber. All the lumber is bastard sawn which is a colorful way of saying flat sawn. I sawed all the lumber into flitches, and then removed the bark by resawing on edge, for the maximum width boards possible. I started the milling on Sunday, and resawed on tuesday, and finally stacked the lumber for air drying today, on top of the other persimmon wood. I removed what was left of the bark with a drawknife. I finished my 8-way bamboo splitter today also. I plan to make some wooden handles out of poplar to go over the metal handles.