It is a pine tree and as with all pines, its wood should be harvested and processed during the cold months of the year. If the round wood stays stacked for too long before it is being sawn, the warmer spring air causes it to turn blotchy blue under the bark. This stain is caused by a fungus and even though it doesn't affect the structured integrity, it devalues the beautiful wood.
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For this reason it is often used for flour and corn chests. The flour worm can't stand the scent of the Swiss pine and in this way, the flour is protected. The wood keeps its scent and the effect it has on flour worms remains for many generations. There is something else which one should consider when using Swiss pine.
On one of those beautiful autumn days, a farmer came along and arranged with me to cut a stack of Swiss pine for him in the next week. Swiss pine is also called arve and grows way up high in the 'Hohen Tauern' over 2,000m above sea level. This wood is famous for the exquisite scent of its aromatic oils.
Because of this harvesting rhythm, the wood mill has its most quiet time in autumn. The harvest begins again in winter at a particular moon. At those quiet times, we do repairs and maintenance work and also mill wood for farmers in the area. In this case the farmer doesn't sell his own wood to the mill, but pays us to saw it into boards and posts for his own needs.
Many years after the replacement beam story, I was preoccupied running our own wood mill. Together with my wife and our employees, I made some designs in the manufacturing process. For years now, we only used selected trees which had been harvested at the right time to produce quality building and form wood to manufacture solid wooden homes and floors. We called it "Holz100".
If we decide to work with nature and use simple and natural methods, then everything is possible in the wood-working and wood industry. Three things are responsible for the wooden beams staying stable and true:
I now had a greater appreciation of Granddad's particular and detailed descriptions. More of his experiences and insights were coming through all the time and I endeavor here to tell you as much as possible. Something else I learned then: it doesn't matter how big a project, if you build a whole house or just buy a book-shelf for your unit, what matters is only how you do it and how we treat our trees.
I knew very well that the correct choice of wood and timing were of importance for the quality of the wood. However, I didn't think it possible for elaborate constructions like this large gallery to practically stay free of splits and cracks. Nor would I ever have thought the difference between 'typical' wood and ours would be as obvious as in the replaced beam.
I still feel grateful towards the carpenter as the story goes on. One year later, this particular beam had splits and cracks as thick as a finger. Six years later, when I visited this house again, it was the only one in the whole house that was split and had cracks. All other beams, which we took from the "Johannistal' at the right time of the year and moon phase, were beautifully intact, even though they had been processed while 'green'.
I was sure about it and I needed to know. When the architect came over, he explained: "The carpenter had sawn one of the timbers wrong and replaced it with one of his beams." This in itself was not a disaster, but I just couldn't help but notice. It was fresh and green, without splits and cracks and as expertly finished as all the other work in this house.
When they celebrated, I was able to admire the fine work of the cabinet-makers and carpenters. You can imagine how closely I looked at 'our' wood and how surprised I was about my discovery: in the lounge area, there was one beam which was not 'ours'! I was dead sure! It had grown faster than the others and its branch knots were different too.
This method is the most natural way of drying wood. Compared to kiln drying, this is much gentler on the environment and economically sensible. Back to the building site: I was horrified about the intentions of the architect to use the wood in May. Without further drying, it was literally "green"! Against my experience and expertise, I gave in. The one who pays also has the say. By the end of June, the fresh wood had been used to build the house.
A tree which has been cut down tries very hard to produce fruits and seeds one last time. When we leave the branches on the trunk, they pump out incredible amounts of moisture and the wood in turn becomes lighter. When the tree top is pointing downhill, gravity too supports the natural dehydrating mechanism and can reduce the moisture content of wood from 100% down to 40-50%.
In this case, the driver decided to take all trunks instead of coming back to pick up the few remaining ones. He was surprised when he noticed that even with those extra trunks, his load was not as heavy as he had expected. He asked me, "Forester, I have never transported wood that was so light! How is that possible?" I was thrilled, because it showed that we had good reason to leave the branches on trees until March.
A transport company took the tree trunks by truck to the sawmill. At the last run, the driver would have had to leave some trunks behind, because he needed to be on the safe side. The drivers, who deal with wood day in and day out, know exactly how much they can carry before they are overloaded.
Our plan was to bring the logs down to the valley in May (spring in the northern hemisphere), saw them and allow the wood to dry naturally before building with it. However, things were panning out differently. By the end of March, the architect had sent snow equipment to remove the remaining snow and leftovers from avalanches from the forestry roads, because the building dates were accelerated. He wanted to have the Timber/ Wood to build with by the end of May.
As if he understood the significance of this day, my dog sat on a tree trunk overlooking the felled spruces and waited for the return back down into the valley. After a short break, we swiftly skied back towards the forestry house. The giant spruces were left behind, with their branches still attached. The tree tops and branches still functioned as pumps and drained the remaining moisture from the trunk.
Wedging was particularly important because we wanted the tree tops to point downhill. At 3pm, we were exhausted but happy. We cut more than 30 spruce trees at the right time and location and had them positioned with the tops downhill. There were enough trees for the planned home.
The moon was waning just before the new moon in Capricorn - according to tradition, the very best time to harvest wood, so we wanted to make the most of the day. Two men dug up more than a meter of snow to free the tree trunk, so they could cut as close to the ground as possible and not waste any precious wood. One man was sawing and the other wedging.
We evenly distributed the saw, axe, wedges and other tools into four backpacks. Then we strapped snow skins under our touring skis and began the nearly five-hour-long ascent into the white and snow-covered 'Johannis Valley'. The selected spruce trees grew between the small 'Ahornboden' and the 'Laliderwaenden'.
When there is a will, there is a way, and I finally found a fellow forestry worker from the 'Salzburger Land' (the area around Salzburg in Austria), who took on the job. It was autumn when we finally selected the trees and the contract was signed. On 7 Jan 1989 at 4am, the five of us (the architect insisted he and his friend were part of the party, the logging contractor, my dog and myself), started our tour.
His conviction and his burning desire were contagious. This task increasingly fascinated me and I was looking to do this job with a professional wood cutting contractor. I couldn't send my forestry workers to hike up there for five hours in snow up to their bellies to get those few selected trees.
After we compared those trees with some others in a different, lower altitude valley, he was sure that only the ones in 'Johannistal im Karwendel' were meant for his house. He believed in the impossible and his thoughts were constantly preoccupied with the question of how and who was cutting those selected trees at this specific time of the year when the most dangerous avalanches were waiting to be triggered.
It usually is around Christmas to early January when there is about two meters of snow throughout the valleys and mountains of my forestry district. "Impossible" was my first reaction. "At this time, the path up to the small 'Ahornboden' is too dangerous because of avalanches." The architect insisted.
I too was familiar with wood which stayed straight and true like the very slow-growing and mature trees up in the high valleys of the 'Karwendel' mountains. Only the most experienced master violin-builders would seek to use these precious trees and the time chosen to harvest them is of utmost importance.
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