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Chris's Report: January 14 & 15

Jan. 14 was our first intense classroom experience. We were with Filippo Campagna, an instructor at the Akademie from Rottweil and a master carpenter, who is our meister for the three weeks. Today's goal was to bend our minds around German techniques for roof layout. They are expert at "staying in plan as long as you can." The techniques we use to develop roof plans are very non-mathematical to this point. We are working with geometrical drafting techniques to develop roof shapes. These techniques are straightforward and can be applied to any roof shape imaginable (and some I can't imagine). The photo of drawings are what German master students are expected to be able to do after 50 hours of instruction. We hope for similar results. It was good to sink our teeth into this topic with a vengeance.

Jan. 15 we awoke to 4" of fresh snow. Our mission today: drive to nearby Beffendorfer and tour Mafell AG. The motto here is "Wir verstehen unser Handwerk." Indeed they do understand hand work. For some this is close to a visit to Mecca. For all a deep appreciation for German engineering was gained. We saw some old friends here -- Klaus Okunowski who some of us know; we met the CEO -- Matthias Krauss, who led our plant tour; and we made close friends with some amazing new tools and friendly folks. This is an experience none of us will forget soon.

Chris's Report: January 16 & 17

We've spent some pretty intense time in class lately. Filippo has led us through a staggering array of traditional and bizarre roof shapes and their solutions. We have visited regular hips and valleys, irregular shapes, roofs with varying wall heights, roofs with interesting court yards somewhere in the middle, and roofs with strange protuberances. Bring it on. Today we began designing joinery. So far we've used geometry, trigonometry, and algebra. What next? Can't wait until the stair building class next week; maybe calculus!

Thursday evening a bunch of us went to Solemar, an incredible water-oriented health facility in Bad Duerrheim. Besides partaking of the innumerable salt water pools, we were awestruck by the structure: Filippo's former company did this extremely complex glulam roof structure. Check out www.bad-duerrheim.de/html/solemar.cfm. Surf around this site. A welcome addition to our agenda.

One last thing: everyone on the vineyard needs to know that Billy owes Kenny 4 Euros.

Chris's Report: January 19 - 21

We've been hard at it in the shop, modeling in wood what we've learned on paper. Model # 1 is a simple (?!) hip roof of regular plan and pitch. We were given a set of dimensions -- building length and width, pitches, and basic frame design. We developed the plan view full scale on paper, and then developed the common profile. From that we developed the hip profile, struts, and braces. We were able to trace lines directly from our drawings to the wood, as we have been drawing 1 to 1.

On Tuesday 1/20 George Bucholtz, a master stair builder, came in to give some of us a one-day course in German stair building. George did a fantastic job of leading us through a very complex subject in eight hours. We designed a set of winders in plan and then each stringer in profile at 1:5. Meanwhile George worked the stair out 1:1 on the floor. Placement of the treads in a winder set is a very organic affair here; an interesting juxtaposition to much of the rest of German carpentry. There is potential here for more intensive study through the Akademie if there is interest.

The goal.	Herr Krauss.	Guess what I bought.
Ken at work.	Filippo.	Getting it done.
James concentrating on a compound brace in his model.
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