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I made my way to Maine from Hawaii, only two days after I left Japan. My loadout was slim, knowing any and all the stones and tools I might need could be borrowed from friends and teachers at the festival. Especially Anton, a mini god of deep preparation. Who travels with a granite plate and a Brita filter pitcher? Anton, thankfully.
Before the festival began, I helped cut out a blacksmith shop timber frame. The frame, in eastern white pine, was a pleasure to work on. I enjoy the idea of myself as just a weapon or tool for more senior carpenters, and was assigned wherever I was needed. Jason had me cut a housed 3-way joint, tune up a kanawa tsugi, and repair an overcut housing in a natural beam.
I could feel a different level of speed and accuracy coming from my time at Mount Fuji and Somakosha, compared to my work at the beginning of the year. All I wanted to do was cut wood, as ferociously and accurately as I could.
Jason was pulling 18 hour days at least, and operating a crane on the final day with 3 hours of sleep. It was wild, but Jason is wild. There is no one with a bigger or more courageous heart in our community. That is what it takes to build a 2 floor timber frame with a handful of beginner carpentry students, in 6 days.
There should be a study on how his brain works, and how he lives his life with so much momentum and confidence. It’s quite beautiful to see my friend be who he is, and to be able to support him in any way.
The frame was raised around midnight the night before the festival began. I asked Jason why he is crazy, and his answer was pretty straightforward: "I just think I'm doing what I wanna do and not taking no for an answer and not allowing obstacles to slow it down and just work on the problem."
Jason continued, "When I was a kid growing up in a pretty supportive middle class family, my mom was sort of overprotective. She'd be like, how do you know how to do that? Or, you can't do that! This kind lead to a need of prove myself that like I could do anything. Other than like, physics, there's no reason why anything can't be accomplished with the right drive and resources. And when you add in people who are excited about it, you really can accomplish great things. There are so many limitations people put on themselves. You just gotta focus and put the work in. And it's so easy to get sucked into bad habits and laziness and television, and you know all this other stuff that prevents you from achieving your goals."
We celebrated the raising after Eric, priest from Chozen ji, blessed the frame. Then we turned in and prepared for the festival’s start.
The next day, carpenters and woodworkers started to show up. Brian Holcombe, Jude Noteboom, Douglas Brooks, Jim Blauvelt, Anton Hang, Jay Van Arsdale, Jason Forster, JP Li, Andrew Hunter, Jaime Ishii, Dorian Bracht, Andrew Ren, Daniel Stockman, Greg Gunn, and surprise guest Morgan Donn, to name just a few. (Yann Giguere was missed this year, but there in spirit.)
I also had the opportunity to share some knowledge gained from teachers in Japan. I interviewed Andrew Ren about his kezuroukai planing and sharpening. And I gave a demonstration of some of Somakosha’s sharpening methods involving secondary bevels and hollow grinds.
If you hollow grind a blade, there are a few things to know.