Well after about 5 hours of total time spent on it—and 4 resharpenings of an X-acto blade—I have finished maybe one quarter of the interior details of the katagami pattern so far. I never thought I would find myself sharpening an X-acto blade, let alone sharpening it every hour. Some of the lines are barely the thickness of the x-acto blade itself. I think it may actually pay to invest in a set of the traditional dōgubori (punch-carving) punches and hikibori (pull-carving) knives. I would ideally love to learn how to make them myself—just as the traditional stencil carvers do—but for now I think it would be best to try and find a source for the knives and punches.
Below is another significantly reduced image—the active part (in other words without the border) 9.5×3.65 inches, about two thirds the size of the 1694 original—of the stencil, the areas that are blue are what I cut yesterday and last night, in two sessions, totalling four to five hours. I did make one significant mistake—I should have started in the upper left corner to reduce the chances of any damage while working the rest of the pattern. The cutting is being done in two stages: first the finer detail work, then the larger open sections. This is done to keep the pattern as stable as possible. If I tried to cut everyting in the same pass, the chance of tearing out some of the finer bridges and details would be significantly higher.
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