Fast Fact: There's a unique wood planing competition held every year in Japan. (See final video)
The competition test competitors' skills by seeing who can shave off the thinnest piece of wood possible.
It seems pushing the limits of one’s abilities with their tools in Japan is not only entertaining - but quite impressive!
In November 2012 the wood planing competition was held in the port city of Uwajima, on the island of Shikoku, and the thinnest shaving was only 9 microns thick. A micros is one-thousandth of a millimeter…Just to give you an idea of how impressively thin that is, the average human hair is 100 microns across, a cloud water droplet is 10 microns in diameter, and a human blood cell measures 8-9 microns. Even more incredible is the fact that the record for the thinnest shaving currently stands at 3 microns.
Update: Original video no longer exists. Sorry! We hope this one will suffice...
The video was created by Professor Yasunori Kawai and Honorary Professor Chutaro Kato of the Faculty of Education, Art and Science at Yamagata University - .http://kegaki.kj.yamagata-u.ac.jp/shi... Several people subsequently made it possible for the video to be viewed and understood by English-speaking audiences. Woodworker Bill Tindall gained permission from professor Kawai to post the video publicly; Mia Iwasaki translated the text and audio; and woodworker Wilbur Pan created the subtitles from Iwasaki's translation.
Banzai
Kezuroukai, Planing Competition Finals 2012
Every year this planing competition is held in a different region in Japan. In November 2012 it was held on the island of Shikoku, in the port city of Uwajima. I accompanied a small group of Americans to the festival and we were amazed at the enthusiasm and overwhelming dedication to making nothing but the perfect shaving. We made a lot of friends and look forward to June 2013 when the Kezurokai is held in Shizuoka.
ryukyutextile
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