Blacksmiths' nails

An article about our visit to Japan has just been published in the Japan Times (link here). It is alway a worry that journalists who drop by for a few hours can completely miss the point of an event, but Winnie spent a long time on site chatting to people, did her background research and on the whole it is a lovely article. 

Just one point of correction, the nails made by the blacksmiths definitely weren't just for show. They were for parts of the buildings that will stay assembled. Those the Japanese blacksmith were delicately beautiful with a little curl at the top:

They were used to hold together the side panels - photo below left - a row of them just below the feet of the carpenter in the roof and at head height of those on the ground. However they are not visible when finished - photo below right - as a strengthening piece of wood is slotted in front and held in place with wedges:

 

Yoshida san the blacksmith is in the picture on the right watching Amemiya san with the beautiful hanger he also made to suspend the kettle above the fire. It has a very sweet little mechanism to adjust the height and is for me typical of Japanese understated design aesthetic. 

Those nails made by the European blacksmiths were just a s beautiful in their own way, but larger and more robust because they were destined to hold part of the roof together.

They went in the part where the roof splayed out half way down. Some of these pieces were constructed beforehand and others were assembled in situ:

Manne and Gunther, the European blacksmiths, also made a beautiful hanging barbecue and I'll post some pictures of that separately. (After a break to mark some student work - that's what pays the bills! - I am back processing Kesurokai video and currently studying footage of the construction of the European frame. More about that to follow later in the week.)

Comments

[Alviti]

Just last week my work mate and I were commenting on the craftmanship of the nails we were pulling out of the walls and floors on the renovation we've been doing.
From a carpenters point of view using cut nails is so much harder than using machine made ones, they just don't drive in the same.
They're still handy though and i've used them when making oak doors for barn conversions and also for (believe it or not) fixing into thermolite blocks.
Your blog is great by the way.