Wood Joinery (Part 4):

Notice: This chapter is mostly focused on the usage of the Sampo-gumi-shikuch and Hirakake-komisen-tsugi techniques so If you have a hard time visualizing what is going on I would recommend you search the terms up on google.

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Genesis February 16th, 0001:

I once again woke up early today, this time though, as I had nothing else to do I got straight to work, I still had 4 tree logs left for me to use. Plus, the height of the room only had to be 9ft meaning that I only had to use 10ft of log per pillar leaving me with 6 ft worth of extra wood to use for the roof.

All in all, it took me 7 hours to get all of the support beams done including cutting 4 more trees, as for why it was quicker than usual it was because unlike the wooden beams used for the base, these were just normal wooden beams with a wooden cylinder right below the top. And base that changed between the support beams.

I had assumed that the 4 originally planned for support beams would be enough to stabilize the entire house, so I had added squares that were slightly smaller than the entire edge itself so that I could use them to connect the wood leading to four of the support beams having a hole carved into the bottom of them, but the other four extra support beams had nothing, so I just caved a hole into the wooden beams used as the base of the house so the extra support beams could be inserted.

This caused the extra support beams to be slightly lower than the support beams in the corners, but that was something that could be easily fixed. Plus since it would create a cross made out of wood slightly below the base of the roof, it could be used to hold a light source to illuminate the place once I could make a controllable lighting source like lamps.

For now though, it would go unused, after all, although I should be able to make torches if I wanted, I would just be asking for trouble if I put an experimental torch inside a purely wooden home. In the end after connecting everything, I began to move on to making the base of the roof by using the Sampo-gumi-shikuchi technique.

Unlike how they were usually made though, I had to adjust the original design to fit what I was trying to do. It was the same principle, it's just that both the piece of wood connected to the wooden cylinder and the piece of wood connected to the one that was already connected to the cylinder had the end that would face outward being short while the end facing inward would be long enough to reach the other corners neighboring the Sampo-gumi-shikuchi.

Of course, the wood beam would be too unstable if it was to be left that way, so it would also have a piece of wood extend downward into the support beams found in the middle. This in turn made it so that the wooden beam would basically be a T shape with a very long top and a very short bottom.

By now everyone was already awake, so I didn't have to cut any more trees myself anymore (as I had done for the extra support beams). When they came over though I noticed that they seemed hungry so I checked my pocket watch and was shocked to see that it was already 1 PM, I apparently had been too focused on making the house and lost track of time.

To make it up to them, I decided to let them repeat lunch, and eat right now, thankfully we only really ate breakfast and dinner, with the occasional lunch every now and then. Lunch was short, and I was able to get back to work really quickly, but as everyone else finished quicker than I did, I was able to see a little bit of what they did with their free time.

Apparently, they had begun to play a game where from what I was able to see, they just kicked the small ball around and whoever had the ball had to attempt and stop everyone else from getting a hold of it only using their feet. I was impressed that they had begun creating their own games so soon, then again soccer and its predecessors like it could be traced back thousands of years back, so I suppose it was a pretty common idea when it came to creating a game.

Going back to work, I was able to make the four wooden beams that would be used for the base of the roof in only four hours, the way it would work would be that the wooden beams that were to be connected on the long sides of the house would have the caving that connected directly to the cylinder part of the support beams on both ends.

On the other hand, the wooden beams that would be connected to the triangular faces of the roof were the ones that were carved to connect to the wooden beams on the sides on both ends. By now it was 5 PM, but since I was almost done with the base, I decided it would be best to just get the entire base of the roof done by the end of the day and finish everything off tomorrow.

This in turn just basically meant that I had to get all of the extra support beams to connect to the wood beams used as the base of the roof, which was just a matter of using the Hirakake-komisen-tsugi technique by carving onto the top of the extra support beams and the downwardly extended piece of wood of the wooden beams used as the base of the roof.

Once that was done it was basically 5:20 PM, and dinner time was near, so I was only able to do everything in my workout with the exception of the 4-hour run. With the small amount of extra time I got, I was able to start weaving a soccer ball. Although it wasn't much, it felt unfair to not help everyone else find things they could do for fun, especially when the alternative was to do nothing for an entire day.