While browsing Youtube, I came across a video showing a Japanese craftsman making wooden wading nets. Since I had made a few net frames in the past I was intrigued by some of the techniques he showed, and decided to make a few more nets myself. I chose to make a small offset-shaped net, with a cherry handle and a three-strip contrasting wood frame, soaking, rather than steaming, the strips to soften them enough to form them, and shaping the frame loop ‘freehand’ rather than using a frame jig. A first frame has now been assembled and glued and is waiting for final shaping, sanding and finishing, while a second frame is waiting for glue-up.
I usually check my strips for dimension (both correspondence to the design thickness from the taper plan and consistency flat to flat) by carefully taking measurements with a digital caliper. I know that this is less than accurate, since the apex, which is always one of the reference ‘sides’, is very easily crushed, resulting in an undersize reading (the actual crushing of the apex itself is not so much a problem). There are better, more accurate ways, to measure dimensions of a (equilateral) triangular strip. The most common approach among bamboo rod makers is to use a so-called Waara v-block, named for the rod maker (and machinist and inventor) who popularised it and manufactured them for sale. The principle behind it is that you put a strip in a 60 degree v-groove in a block that has a cutout for a pair of calipers, supporting the apex side of the strip with the groove, rather than by its apex alone, and measuring the thickness of the strip-plus-block. If you know what the net thick...



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