Good cherry is hard to come by. One source is old blocks, so Dave keeps an eye out for those that go on sale. He was really happy to get a shipment of unexpectedly large, unexpectedly thick old blocks, and he and Aoyama san were able to re-saw them with a bandsaw, keeping the carved layer intact, and producing new layers of cherry to use. Here's Aoyama san with a batch of recently-unclamped blocks. He's laminated nice thick layers of cherry around a plywood core. The small ones are for the Japan Journey subscription series; the larger ones are for Ukiyo-e Heroes; and the long narrow blocks will be used to print two as-yet-undecided postcard-sized prints side by side:

The new blocks need to be trimmed to size. Aoyama san has an interesting setup for doing indoor circular saw cutting:

The jig gets a straight cut, the custom blade guard contains the sawdust, and the hose gets connected to a vacuum, so there's hardly any mess.

And here's a cut in action:

After having the surface planed smooth, these blocks will be ready to carve, keeping the wheels of Mokuhankan rolling!