{"id":1438,"date":"2025-09-26T01:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T06:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/?p=1438"},"modified":"2025-09-23T10:05:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T15:05:46","slug":"kotansu-from-tama-trays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/kotansu-from-tama-trays\/","title":{"rendered":"Kotansu from Tama Trays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am very excited to tell you about this next project because it has been “in progress” for a very long time. Once I made the tama<\/em> storage trays<\/a>, I started thinking about how to keep them all together in a tidy fashion. I could just put them into drawers, or I could make them into<\/strong> drawers. Sweetie and I have a couple of Japanese haribako<\/em> sewing toolboxes, so I could base a small chest of drawers (kotansu<\/em>) on the existing trays and that basic design.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Small Chest of Drawers, or Kotansu<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

That went pretty well. I was able to make the carcass in a day or so. It is just pine common boards that I planed down to half-inch thickness to reduce bulk. Cutting the slots to hold the drawer supports in place was tricky, especially since I wanted to have the double-depth drawer in the lower left. There is also a not-drawer in the upper left which is actually top-loading bin with a hinged lid. I wound up cutting the lid for the bin with a traditional Japanese hand saw called an azebiki nokogiri<\/em> which is designed to start cuts in the middle of a board. I bent the drawer pulls myself from brass rod. and installed them in the drawers in simple friction-fit holes. Since the carcass is deeper than the drawers, there are wood blocks behind each drawer to keep the drawer from sliding in too far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kotansu<\/em> sat in an unfinished state for some time, until this summer when a friend of ours gave me some curly maple scants he had cut and planed for making knife handles. After cutting some of them to size to match the drawers, I finished them with shellac and glued them into place. Lining up the holes for the pulls was somewhat tricky, and fitting them closely to opening in the carcass took a lot of fine-tuning. Once the drawers were complete, I felt that the bare pine of the carcass was a bit too bright, so I gave it a light coat of wood stain just so it contrasted better with the maple.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Kotansu<\/em> with open drawers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Now it looks like furniture! It is so satisfying to be able to finally call this project “done”. I made the original trays almost two years ago, and assembled the carcass about a year ago. Completing this third and final (?) phase is a big relief. I use the tools that I store in here all the time, which means I use this project all the time and having it look so much nicer is wonderful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am very excited to tell you about this next project because it has been “in progress” for a very long time. Once I made the tama storage trays, I started thinking about how to keep them all together in a tidy fashion. I could just put them into drawers, or I could make them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,6,3,20,31],"tags":[147,837,217,637,806,297,276,838],"class_list":["post-1438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-braiding","category-japanese","category-projects","category-woodworking-japanese","category-woodworking-projects","tag-braiding","tag-drawers","tag-furniture","tag-hardware","tag-kotansu","tag-pine","tag-storage","tag-tama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1448,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions\/1448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}