Kawara
The photos here show our temporary shop structure at the Port. Mr. Koji Matano, a glass artist and builder of Western boats, was the coordinator of our project (minamiizu.net). I have a Japanese apprentice, canoe guide and canoe builder Takumi Suzuki (www.hacarame.com). You can see him with his wife Yoshiko and a drawing on the boat we are building. We worked with an 84-year old craftsman, literally the last boatbuilder of the region, for information on this boat. A local shipyard donated some nails to us from stock they had not used in many years. Mr. Tengu Shibafuji of Kochi City gave us over 250 hand-made boat nails that he got from the family of a desceased boatbuilder.
We started by laying out he lines for our bottom plank, called kawara, and then fitting the seam using a series of handsaws. Those readers familiar with my blog may remember this technique, which may be unique to Japanese boatbuilding. Finally, yesterday we chiseled the mortises for our edge nails which will join the two planks together.
Incredible! Please post more photos.
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