eliot d
I know I should include a photo, as Pam suggests. But I believe it would be hard to see in a photo anyway. The way to think about this particular twist is this way: look at the plane upside down with the sharp edge of the iron pointing away from you, so the sole is up, and the long part of the sole is furthest away, on the far side of the mouth. Now, with one winding stick at the farthest edge( what Japanese call the back) and another at the closest edge (Japanese front), when you site across, the far stick slopes from left to right and the near stick from right to left. So it really looks like somebody twisted the far side clockwise and the near side counter-clockwise. And luckily for me the mouth appears to be at the neutral part of the twist. Perhaps even more luckily, the near stick does appear almost level; it's more the far stick that's sloped -- but by a lot. So, using your way of describing it, I'd have to say that it's the "north west" (far left) corner that's "above" a plane made by the other three. (I have to tell you, speaking as a mathematician, that with any four points in space, any three form a plane; so it's not really possible to say THESE three form the plane and the other is above or below. But here , for this dai, in this situation, I can see that a good way to describe it is that the "north west" corner is high.) I think I'll just wait a while to see if the fairly cool air conditioning in my shop tends to encourage this to straighten out a bit. If not, I guess I'll carefully go after the high corner. The sides aren't square, either. It's a beautiful dai, though; and I'm glad t have it. I won't use any power tools on it.