Month: September 2025

bookmark_borderBasic Hakama in Green Linen

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Here is a more recent project than some of the backlog docs I’ve been posting lately. This past Pennsic was the first Pennsic, after more than 25 years of going to Pennsic, that I was able to spend the full two weeks mostly on site. There is a basic pair of blue linen hakama that I rarely wear during the year that I got a lot of mileage out of at Pennsic. It’s a little more historical looking than the monpe I usually wear for informal use. So, I bought a few yards of this nice olive green linen to make another pair of basic hakama for informal wear.

Green Linen Hakama

They only have 3 panels per leg, two in front and one in back. This makes them lighter to wear and much lower class than the 4 panels per leg I normally make for semiformal wear. Each panel is about 14.5″ wide. The legs are 36″ long from waistband to hem, which is a little shorter than I normally make, and there is a drawstring through the hems so they can be drawn up just under the knee. I expect to get a lot of mileage out of these as well.

bookmark_borderCopernicus Scroll Illustration

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Back before Pennsic, I was contacted by our local group’s “Signet” (person in charge of organizing scribes and illuminators to make award scrolls) about illustrating an award scroll for my Sweetie. She was receiving the highest award for service that our Barony gives, so I knew it had to be something she would really enjoy. That meant irises.

Traced from “Irises and Eight-fold Bridge” by Sakai Hoitsu

Traced from an image in Beyond Golden Clouds (Yale University Press, 2009), edited by Janice Katz, page 153. The original is a two-panel “oshie-bari byobu” painted screen, roughly 52” tall. The Sakai family owned several paintings by Ogata Korin, and Hoitsu seeks to imitate his master’s style here in a screen titled “Irises and Eight-fold Bridge”. The original screen uses a background of gold leaf squares to create the illusion of golden sunlight reflecting off the surface of the water. Irises take significant tending, but the work results in a multiplication of blooms over time. I chose to leave the background of this copy blank to suggest that there is always work left to be done.

I did a practice copy on some of my regular (affordable) hosho paper, then did this fair copy on a large piece of kozo paper. Sweetie loves it so much that she had it framed for display in her den.

bookmark_borderRed Kerchiefs with Escarbuncles

Posted on by Elliott Evans

At Pennsic last year, I bought a laser-cut wooden fabric stamp of an escarbuncle. The escarbuncle is the symbol of our SCA Kingdom. I decided to try out my brandy new stamp and make some simple decorated kerchiefs. I had a bunch of this red poly/cotton fabric left over from some jinmaku projects, so away we go.

I seem to remember making like a dozen of these. The stamp worked very well, provided I was very good about cleaning it between kerchiefs.

Here’s a close-up of one of the better stamped escarbuncles. The only problem with stamping textile color onto fabric (as opposed to painting) is that the stamp can only apply paint to the surface. It doesn’t force paint into the grain of the fabric the way brushing or screen printing does.

Anyway, I put all of these into the largesse derby back in January, so now they are the Crown’s to distribute.

bookmark_borderBox for Feast Gear

Posted on by Elliott Evans

At Pennsic this past year, during the discussion of “things we need in camp” that led to the shelves project, a friend offered to barter for a wooden box in which they could carry around their feast gear. A few weeks later I was in one of the DIY stores and bought a piece of lauan plywood that I thought might make a nice box. Lauan plywood has two smooth faces of thin veneer, sandwiching a single core layer of lightweight wood. It’s basically the wood equivalent of corrugated cardboard. As such, it is lightweight, reasonably durable, and attractively priced.

The interior of this lidded box is roughly 24 inches long, by 12 inches wide, by 6 inches deep. The lid fits fairly snugly. I added some surplus maple strips to the joins to hopefully boost its durability. Everything is glued together and reinforced with 23-gauge pins, but I figured a little bracing could not hurt. I put a light coat of stain on the surface to give it a little bit of water resistance.

This was a quick project, and I was awfully glad to be able to just go out into the garage and make a thing that somebody I know needed. Maybe I’ll make a few of these to hide some of the plastic storage boxes and random items we have sitting around in camp.

bookmark_borderPennsic Gate Panels

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Last year, I made a new entry gate for the Debatable Lands Pennsic camp. Part of the design was for two panels, made from 6-foot 1-by-10 lumber, that are basically decorative and not structural. The idea was to use them as message boards that could be repainted every year or so depending on what people wanted to say. Last year, they honored 50 years of the Debatable Lands. (Because you can’t spell “Debatable Lands” without “L ans“.) This year I wanted them to honor Pennsic 52. (Now playing with a full deck!)

I bought two 1x10x72 boards at the orange DIY store and sanded them smooth. Last year I rounded-over the edges, but this year I did not bother. Then, I applied sanding sealer to harden the wood and sanded it (after drying) to create a nice smooth surface for painting. I did the “calligraphy” and playing-card “illustration” mostly by hand using enamel paint. The white rounded rectangles were taped off to make it easier to keep the edges crisp. rather than get too twitchy about making identical card backs, I just taped margins on the rectangles and kind of swiped the black and red brushes across. Most people seemed to understand what I was going for.

Anyway, these went over well and as a bonus, I can use the cards again next year since it’s 52 years as a Barony!

bookmark_borderBanner for Owen Tegg

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Here’s a project that barely has any wood in it at all! It’s another silk banner for a friend who was being elevated to the peerage in the SCA. Owen’s arms has one of those repeating patterns that make it an awful lot of work for a vertical banner like this, but the rams at the top are interesting.

I laid out the repeating pattern in chalk, then suspended the silk in my pvc-pipe painting frame and used black gutta resist to make the lines for the pattern. Then it was a simple if maddening chore to color in every other rhomboid with paint. Once that was dry I treated the upper portion with sizing, then traced and painted the rams.

I’m always a little paranoid about the paint, so even though I used the air-set additive in the paint I also did a bunch of ironing to heat-set the paint. I have to wash the silk to get all the chalk off, so I need to be sure the paint is well and truly set.

Anyway, this banner was done in plenty of time before Pennsic, and we used it at Owen’s vigil and his procession into court. Always happy to help out, and be able to contribute a gift that somebody can actually use.

bookmark_borderTravel Crate for a Takedai

Posted on by Elliott Evans

So, the takedai I have actually comes apart into pieces, so you can travel without having this large loom-thing in your vehicle. It didn’t come with a box or anything, though, so I would be traveling with a pile of loose parts like this:

If only I knew how to make some kind of box… oh wait, I do! I calculated that I needed a box about 4.5″ deep, 30″ tall, and 22″ wide. I thought I would have to buy wider lumber and cut it down to 4.5″ wide, but the store I went into actually had 1-by-5 in stock for some reason. How weird is that? The large faces are “masonite” style hardboard. A couple of sheets of that are cheaper than a similar amount of plywood, and about as durable. The “rim” is some of the 1×5 that I actually did cut down to width in the band saw.

I cut the hardboard to size first, taking the thickness of the wood into account. I actually broke out the circular saw for that, since it was faster than getting the table saw set up. Then, I built the frame, gluing and nailing (with a nail gun) the frame pieces in place around one side. Screws at the corners secure the butt joints. Once that was done, I glued and nailed on the other side, completing the box. Next, I cut six inches off the top of the box, and built the two rims around the openings of the body and lid portions of the box. The rims are glued in place, and secured with screws.Finally, I added the latches to secure the lid during transport.

I went for a tall narrow box instead of a flat wide box because I felt it would be easier to slide the pieces in than to stack them up. I kind of feel I was right. Slide in the two big pieces, then put the long pieces long the side. It works pretty well, and it’s easier to carry vertically than horizontally especially after I messed up the tendons in my lower arms lifting tabletops five years ago.

Here’s another angle so you can see how neatly it all fits in.

bookmark_borderBox-shaped Armrest from Maple

Posted on by Elliott Evans

A while back, I made an early-medieval kyousoku from poplar. That one is more what comes to peoples’ minds when Japanese floor-seated armrests are considered. However, in Traditional Japanese Furniture Kazuko Koizumi mentions another kind of armrest. “A sturdier, box-shaped armrest featuring feather-stuffed pads on top and usually storage space underneath emerged,” during the Muromachi/Momoyama period.

Koizumi, page 166

During Pennsic this year, I went over to the Alben sawmill and bought some excellent maple. Ray had already run it through the planer so it was pretty smooth, but it was still almost an inch thick. I knew that because of that thickness and because of the hardness of the maple, that my ability to make things out of this maple using the small selection of hand tools I had brought to Pennsic was going to be somewhat limited. I decided I would make a siple box, and this idea quickly developed into making a box-shaped armrest. I was able to get all the pieces cut, and and most of the joinery.

Once I got home, and had access to more tools and a sewing machine, I was able to finish shaping the pieces and assemble the armrest. I made a custom cushion out of cotton canvas and polyfill, and used to to upholster the lid of the box. I used copper nails to secure the joinery so it should be quite sturdy. given the density of the wood and its thickness, this completed box weighs more than ten pounds.

The inside of the box is roughly twelve inches by six inches, and four inches deep below the inner lid. I think it’s a bit smaller than the one in the image, but it’s a comfortable armrest when seated on the floor next to it, and I can fit a bowl and cup inside it.

It is not a comfortable seat, although you could probably park a midsize car on it.

bookmark_borderMonitor Booster

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Here’s a silly little quick project that barely even rates a blog post, but here it is anyway. So I have this external monitor that I used to use for work back when I worked from home. You can see in the photo that if I have the tablet in its charging stand, it blocks the lower-right corner of the monitor. The monitor’s stand is not height-adjustable. I only needed to boost the monitor up by like 1.25″ to get it above the edge of the tablet.

Luckily, regular “l by” lumber is 3/4″ thick, so stacking two layers would get me 1.5″ of boost. I still had some of the same cherry-stain pine shelving that I made the little desk hutch out of, so it was just a mater of cutting one piece the same size as the footprint of the monitor stand, and making four little feet. The whole thing is just glued together, and I put some cork pads on the feet to make it just a little nicer.

Enjoy the reflection of my messy studio.

bookmark_borderCrate for a Single Sawhorse

Posted on by Elliott Evans

So last year I made a crate to hold the pieces for two sawhorses. The only problem with that project is that a crate big enough to hold all the pieces for two sawhorses plus all the pieces for two sawhorses is quite heavy and two sawhorses is not enough sawhorses for most work. I usually like to have at least three sawhorses, that’s why I made four sawhorses. Anyway, I decided to make a crate that would be somewhat smaller, and would be sized to only hold the pieces for one sawhorse. I started this a while back, but only just put the final touches on it.

I started with a couple of pine 1-by-8s, cut all the corner joinery by hand, ripped the surplus lumber into slats for the bottom, then assembled the crate with some nice copper nails I found at Rollier’s. I wound up cutting the holes for the handles using a jigsaw, because cutting those by hand with a keyhole saw is very annoying. I used more of the palm rope from Hida Tools.

The crate is actually spacious enough that if you’re willing to overfill it, you can carry all the pieces for two sawhorses. If you use it along side the other crate, you can distribute the different shapes between the crates such that the two crates hold all the pieces for four sawhorses without overfilling.

Anyway, with these two crates I feel like I have fulfilled all my needs for sawhorse storage and transport. The crates also serve as valuable supports for tool chests, and holders for surplus lumber while the sawhorses are in use.