Thank you- a great demonstration of old world techniques. I dare say the whining pajama boys complaining on this thread couldn't have lived a week living this lifestyle. Thanks again for the history lesson.
I see all sorts of comments about wasted wood, but I suspect that if they had a chainsaw way back when this was the only way they wouldn't use it anyways. The planks they get like that have nearly all the grain parallel to the board - stronger and more consistent! Bows were made in the same way. Curves could be straightened, but if you saw your board out you can't fix the grain that isn't working with you.
Also saws back then where wasing *way* more wood then this method anyway... After all saws back then was made by a blacksmith and where thick rather crude blades on the whole...
If they kept splitting the radials they would waste less wood. Only problem with that is the boards would be slightly less wide, although the stave would cover more area.
This is very true. I chainsaw mill and when you cut a slab or board out of the log you never know what shape it’s going to take. All those stresses immediate show. You don’t get that with axe hewn wood
+ScrewDrvr not likely - there are plenty of uses for wood chips, especially when one's home is in Scandinavia and heated with wood fires. Wood chips also happen to make a very good mulch, which is useful when you grow much of your own food. Besides that, a relatively uniform and hardwood charcoal can be made to conveniently fuel the forges of local blacksmiths, the kilns of potters, the furnaces of founders, and the ovens of bakers. What's more, Oak wood (the alleged best wood for making longboats) contains large amounts of tannin - used then primarily in the production of leather. So don't worry - it wasn't just the Native Americans who were stringently making use of every resource available.
If you look at the plank the grain shows sap and heartwood so the grain isn't as you'd expect. Its the same cross cut as Scandinavian skis. Different to bows which carry the grain left to right with a whole ring on the front. This plank would be grain front to back if held flat out in front of you. Interesting idea, I wouldn't have thought it would be stronger or more flexible. Fantastic skills and craft. Thanks!!!
They created a 3mm wide flat on the inside of the wedge that was 1/8 of the log, then snapped lines on the outside of the wedge, also 3mm apart, and hewed away all of the rest of the material. So from the log, they gey 8 planks with vertical grain and a lot of firewood.
Wow, only 4 planks for such a large tree and work? Is this just because it's used on a ship, or would it be equally difficult and time consuming to produce ordinary planks?
3:20 ish - is there a good picture of plan of the draw plane and/or spokeshave - if it's traditional it must be able to be replicated - I'm particularly interested in the metal blade and its mounting. Love the long reach cramps.
+roctjardes Have a Google for the 'Mastermyr tool chest', that's a great source for examples of Viking age tools. This is a good site with recreations of archaeological finds: www.fjellborg.org/LodinsToolbox.htm
The wood chips are most likely where they got the tar from actually. The sap and other hydrocarbons are liberated from the wood in a process called pyrolization. This is simply anerobic heating of organic matter to prevent combustion. The volitiles liquify and run out of the wood and collect in a pit as tar. The wood continues to char and becomes charcoal which was used for cooking. A demonstration can be seen here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-d--rbNuzr_A.html
Looks like really hard man´s work to me, - none of Obama´s women in high heels in that shipyard I guess... It never fails to amaze to see what our anchestors could do with nothing but raw muscle, ingenious brain and what seem to be just a few, simple and practical tools. Good to know that some folks keep this Viking craftsmanship alive. (Call me Sissy, - but I still like my saw ;)
michji2 Black fluid is wood tar, poured on sheep wool. The dark colour of the Hull derives being throughout impregnated with wooden tar. Still used in Scandinavia for traditional boat building..
I tried doing the same thing on a smaller scale with a pine but to no success. Anyone know if cold temperatures could impact splitting and if the wood is able to be green?
In Scandinavia when building timber frame houses the logs would preferably have been hewed as soon as the tree was cut down but then dried for 3-4 years before used in construction.
I know this comment is old, but for this process to really function, tree grain is paramount factor. More important than seasoning, more important than species or any other factor. You have to methodically select trees which grew under very specific conditions to find quality riving material. And the longer you need the stave to be, the more discerning you must be. However, with the right tree, the staves can be hewn the day the tree is cut down. So what is the right tree? One with as straight grain as possible and as little branching as possible. Any twist or branching will result in asymmetric staves that look like the dogs dinner. There was an old saying in eastern europe (probably through-out antiquity though) which said 'trees that hear the tolling (of church bells) are not suitable for riving'. What that meant was one had to go fairly deep in the forest to find trees which grew under moderate competition and thus were forced to put 100% effort to grow absolutely vertically as much as possible as quickly as possible, lest they be outcompeted for light and die. With as minimal effort put in to developing branches as possible. Any tree which grew along a verge, or in too close proximety to other trees and are twisted, or in full sun and has 10,000 branches, is going to produce poor quality staves no matter which tools you use or how long you let it season.
Anyone know of an archaeological find of a viking age block plane such as the one at 3:36? I've been trying to find an example for ages but keep drawing a blank. Thanks!
Adze and draw knife, yes. Block plane, albeit contemporary, not so much. There's like one reference to what could be interpreted as a block plane mentioned in one saga, but then again, several spear nicknames ( not kennings ) have been construed in modern times to mean some kind of early halberd even though they were just variances on spear blades, so one never knows if the saga reference actually was a plane, or just a draw knife.
Nice. =) Looking at the clothing of the people involved I'm wondering if at least some of the people in this video was from Fosen Folkehøyskole though?
They wanted strong and light ships, something you can get only with split and hewn planks. Sometimes quality is a quality in itself! And as Craig said, firewood is never wasted.
The waste wood is where they obtained the tar. The tar is obtained by subjecting the wood mass to a process called pyrolization. Which is just a fancy word for anerobic heating beyond the point of combustion. The heat liquifies the sap, resin and other particulate volitiles, which are prevented from evaporating or combusting, and thus pool downward into a catchment pit (like ore in a forge) . After all the liquid volitiles boil out of the wood, it continues to char becoming charcoal. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-d--rbNuzr_A.html This provided the workers with heat, charcoal for cooking, and tar to preserve their wood and rigging.
You don't build many boats, so a boat is worth cutting a lot of trees down. And back then (and even now) there is a lot of wood in Scandinavia. All the bits of wood that aren't used will get burnt for fuel or used in other ways. Think about how many trees were just used for fuel -- a thousand times as many!!
Probably closer to 16 Half, quarter, eighth. then two planks from each eighth one from each "side" of the split eighth. Now that depends on the particulars of that specific log.
Many, many more. The final planks are just about one cm. or 0.4 inch thick. A funny thing is that axe-hewn planks are much stronger than sawn planks. The saw cuts through the grain, thus weakening the plank, where as an axe follow the grain.
Bloodaxetheirritable They probably got about 8 planks from it. that looked like an 8th of a trunk he was marking up and attaching gauges to. Ancient methods were somewhat wasteful because it was a plentiful, seemingly endless resource. until it all got cut up. Ever hear of the Cedars of Lebanon. that the Egyptians and Greeks used to build their mighty fleets? look at lebanon today... yeah. thats humanity before we learned better. still, no one is building massive fleets of viking ships, so i think a little waste is ok here and there for the sake of preserving 1000 year old skills so that future generations can know about them.
I understand this is about "recreating the past", but wow! What an irresponsible waste of a very good large oak tree that could have, had it been milled, produced dozens of timbers. Such a shame.
+Jeremy Hunter This is no more wasteful than many modern methods. The tree needed to be split radially for what they were making and Oak is often sawn radially creating just as much waste. They have selected the tree well and all the chips can be used as kindling and firewood to heat their workshop or homes. If the tree had been milled there would still be waste in the form of waney edged scantlings and boards that were unusable due to the central pith of the tree and twisted grain.The modern timber industry often wastes more materials and power because a company's time is usually far a greater expense than the cost of materials.
To get a board with all the wood fibers lined up and running the length of the board, this is the only way to do it. This method gives you a board that's many times stronger then any sawn board can possably be. Remember that when these ships were in use, they had to withstand rough seas and powerful storms. There could be no compromise when building these ships. This was the best technology available at the time, and the most efficient hull design possible. The hull is so efficient that it leaves no wake to speak of. When building a wooden boat today, this remains the best technology and hull design available even now.
