It was a bit awkward for him, because my setup is for a left-hander, but he soon got the hang of it. The sheets of paper here are each 1/3 of the dimension known as 'o-biru bosho' ('Wide Hosho'). After sizing, each of these will be cut in half, and will then be used to print the senshafuda, which are four on a block (three images, plus the front label for the package).

No reason to hide what we discovered - right from the start he produced much smoother and better results than I have been able to get so far, after many months of doing this. I've been struggling to get the brush to move across the paper smoothly. If I stroke lightly it will do so, but won't leave enough size, but if I 'dig in', it tends to 'catch' on the paper surface, leaving uneven results.

Tetsui-san though, had no problem with this at all; just put his arm down, and ... brrrrrrr - right across the sheet, firmly and smoothly.

What was the difference? Well, if we were to sit down at the table and arm wrestle, that would probably provide the answer. Simply he has lots of upper body strength, and I have very little at all.

We did a test stack of a dozen or so sheets, then hung them upstairs to dry while we had lunch. We spent some time in the afternoon looking over the image, planning how some of the colour breakdowns might work, and he then took the test paper and headed home. He'll try printing on some of it, and will report back on the sizing condition, although I pretty much already know how that is going to be!

Tomorrow (Sunday) there won't be any progress here on this, as I will return to my regular printing, but Monday morning I'll be calling up Sato-san the carver to arrange for the video session, and to see how far along he has progressed. More then!

This thread continues here ...