Wie man mit Holz arbeitet | SWR Handwerkskunst

Wood, a valuable raw material. Ralf Mattern from Deidesheim is Kiefer. He builds barrels from 200-year-old oak. When choosing wood, he also relies on his nose. When you walk through the warehouse, you can already smell the different smells. Vanilla notes, spices and almost herbs that you can smell in there. We introduce you to three craftsmen who have turned their passion for wood into their profession. Heiko Kircher from Elchesheim-Illingen builds boats according to the old family tradition. Each wood has its own character and special characteristics. This is pine wood and my great-grandfather already used it. My grandfather, my father and now me. It can be bent well. It has proven itself. Rüster, the valuable wood of Ulm, has chosen Leander Sommer from Breitscheid for a table. No, that doesn't fit. Something behind here. The choice of suitable bowls is especially important for the carpenter. I'm lifting them now so you can see if they match in color. You can see that better and better when the dirt in the air goes away. They match in color quite well. But now the order. First we visit Ralf Mattern. Fascinating insights into the Kiefer craft. Today Ralf Mattern begins with a 3,000 liter barrel for a wine cellar on the Mosel. He will need four days for this. He takes a close look at each of the 50 pines. Together with his companion, Ralf Mattern brings the pines to length. The barrel will be about 1.80 meters high. With this machine, Ralf Mattern carves the pines into shape. The massive boards are slanted in the middle. So that the pines can bend better. On fire or with steam, no matter how they are bent, it is easier to bend when it is rejuvenated in the middle, in the abdominal area. And that there will be no breakers later. So that the pines remain bent permanently and no tension cracks arise later. That's why they are lifted. Then Ralf Mattern lays the pines in the right order. Also an important pre-work, the marking of the middle. Without this marking, it is not possible. After a working day, the time has come. Ralf Mattern puts the pines in the barrel with his companion. So to speak, the general test for the barrel. If everything fits, one pine supports the other. With his companion Daniel, he attaches two more pines. Millimeter work, because the middle must be at the same height for all pines. The barrel is bent over a fire. With the forklift, Ralf Mattern locks the 500 kg heavy barrel over the fire. Then his employees lay two ropes around the barrel. But only in high heat can it be put in shape. Ralf Mattern therefore re-lays again. With the firewood I have a great influence. So we only take the excess wood and the firewood and the sections of the actual barrel. So that the oak is really in it. The difference is exactly the same. With the barbecue, it's not much different. Whether I take reed wood or beech wood or barbecue on oak, you also have a different aroma. And so it is here. Of course, this also translates into the wine. Again and again, Ralf Mattern wets the wood with water so that it slowly becomes beech. Piece by piece, the pines join together. The men wrap the hot barrel around four. So, and turn. Slowly the sheets. Yes. Slowly over. And let go of the ice. So that the wood retains its shape, tires are also hit on this side. While the barrel cools down outside, Ralf Mattern is already laying the ground. With the template he draws in the door, also called manhole. The entrance for the beehive. Then he marks the position of the dowels, with which the massive ground is precisely aligned. In his workshop, according to ancient tradition, Ralf Mattern uses reed, which he brings from the region. To keep it, he applies a taste-neutral fat. Then Ralf Mattern takes the exact dimensions for the ground again. A lot can go wrong when transferring the oval. After the ground has been cut out, it is milled all around so that it fits into the groove later. Now Ralf Mattern and his companion knock off the top tires again. The joints jump up a little, otherwise it would be impossible to insert the ground. Now it gets exciting. Carefully, the two men put the heavy ground into the barrel. Good. Here. That's good. The other side. Good. Thanks to its bulging shape, it can be easily rotated. Up to the entrance, the first floor is ready, in the raw building. Now it's the other side's turn, and the companion disappears inside. And a little forward. Time for the next step of the work, the damping. This process takes two hours, where wood and reed swell up. At first, the moisture still comes out of the joints. The last toxins are collected in the so-called winnowing tea. Ralf Mattern tastes how far his barrel is. Through the damping, the wood adapts to the shape even more, the aroma becomes even finer, that is, the toxins are absorbed even more by the steam, then the wood becomes milder and just finer for the wine later. After the barrel has cooled down, the old work tires are finally removed. Time for the fine grinding. Then Ralf Mattern measures for the new tires. The boss does the final hammering on his own. Finally, Ralf Mattern applies a real toy varnish. This is the final treatment. There is nothing on the wooden barrel, and the final treatment from the outside is simply a protection when it lies in a damp, wet cellar, so that it also lasts for generations. Finally, Ralf Mattern inserts the door made of stainless steel. Between 6,000 and 8,000 euros, depending on the equipment, he gets for such a barrel. Almost half of it is material costs. From Ukraine to South Africa or Australia. The barrels of Ralf Mattern from Deidesheim go all over the world. Attention! Hot! The Tischlerei Sommer dries its wood itself, in its own dry chamber. Wood is a living material. It can shrink and swell, shrink or expand, depending on the humidity in the room. Perfectly dried wood is extremely important, so that the furniture does not warp later. The ulm wood should now have dried to the point. I am now measuring the wood moisture again, to check whether it has really dried down to 7%. Yes, that's good. Let's make it 1.40 m thick. Let's cut it down to 1.45 m. Let's see, a little bit more. 1.53 m. Yes, I would get the table out of the width. The three bowls for the table top are pre-cut. Ablängen means that in the Tischler language. Of course, only very roughly and with enough support, because there are still a lot of work to do. Leander Sommer separates the wooden bowls at the circular saw. This creates the four table legs and the two straight bars. The bowls for the table top also receive a treatment at the circular saw. Three boards for the top, four legs and two straight bars. You don't need much more to build a table, if you look away from craftsmanship and many working hours. Now the boards are planed for the table top. Abrichten is what the Tischler calls it. Our board for the table top already looks quite good. But not enough planing is needed. Now the boards for the table top are brought to the desired strength. Now Leander Sommer is in need of aesthetics. The work step of laying the picture is very important for the table, because it decides whether the table will be beautiful afterwards or not. The Tischler fellow is not quite satisfied yet. It can be done even better. From one, make two. And now? Oh, one part goes on one side, the other on the other. Now it fits. Refined. I have separated the board, because it is nicely mirrored in the middle. And the outer part fits quite well, if it is only opposite to the outside. That's why I have separated it in the middle and put it together on both sides. I glue the boards now. These are screw clamps. I clamp the boards together with them, so that I have a flat edge up here, where I apply the glue. The glue should be applied quickly. Now, when the glue is applied, I have about five to eight minutes. Until then, I should have it in the press at the latest. The boards for the table top are ready for gluing. Now, they go into the frame press. Here, hydraulic pressure is used. The advantage is that I have much higher pressure, so that I get better glue results and it also goes faster. A certain speed is also required in our craft, because the customer must be able to pay for it. We continue with the table legs. First, they are planed to size. They measure 50 x 50 mm at the end. And also the straight bars are processed. These are the four legs, and these are the two straight bars, which later hold the table top straight. And then, in the straight bar, the legs are also inserted. So, now we finally know what the two straight bars are good for. To further treat the legs, we go to the circular saw. They are now cut at an angle of six degrees. A trademark of the table and a work step that is really tricky. Aluminium planks are to later connect the table legs with the straight bar. With aluminium planks, table legs and straight bars, it goes on to the workbench. I now glue the aluminium planks into the table leg. It is important to use a good adhesive that also holds. I now have to put them down to dry. That takes about four to five hours, then they are dry. Speaking of drying, the freshly glued table top can be removed from the frame press. In the wideband grinding machine, the table top is roughly sanded on both sides. This is called calibrating in the technical language, i.e. grinding to the desired strength. To do this, the table top has to be let through the machine a few times. At the circular saw, our table top gets its final shape. 1.40 m in length and 80 cm in width. The next work step is a particularly tricky one. The straight bar is the longitudinal recess at the underside of the table. Highest concentration is required when milling. The counterpiece, the straight bar spring, must later fit exactly into the bar. This is the art. Now nothing can go wrong. With the help of the test piece, Leander has adjusted the table top so that he can mill the straight springs flawlessly in shape. The carpenter has to concentrate very much in this work. It depends on a hundredth of a millimeter. Now it's time for the plate again. It is further processed on the table top. All four sides of the table top get their treatment. The oblique edges are part of the summer design. The heavy solid wood plate should not look so massive and of course look even better. Leander is satisfied with the result. This is just an optical question. This makes the plate look so thin, although it is actually 25 mm thick. Leander wants to continue working on the good appearance of the table legs. Again and again it goes over the knife until the leg is much slimmer at the bottom at the end. But now it's good. The legs look really elegant. I have now hollowed out the table legs so that they do not look like plump elephant feet, but have a certain lightness and fit better to the table support here. The last sanding is done by hand. Yes, but I can only round the edges a little with my hand. The machine can't do that. Or it would be too much if I would do it with a machine. And also not uniform. Only with the grinding block Leander has the necessary feeling. Our table top also gets its fine sanding for a wonderfully smooth surface. Looks easy, but even when working with the hand grinder, Leander has to be careful. You shouldn't grind too much at one place. You always have to stay evenly in motion. So that you don't take away too much at one place. I have now finished all the parts for the assembly. Here are the lathes with the holes for the aluminum pins of the legs and the table top with the two lathes. I will now glue the legs to the lathes. And I have now marked which leg fits where best. Glued and screwed, the table legs sit firmly in the lathe. Now it gets exciting. Will the lathes really fit exactly into the grooves on the underside of the table top? Leander tries to push in the lathes by hand. A real force act. The lathes sit quite tight. Sometimes it just needs a little more pressure. But be careful, only well-dosed, so that nothing goes wrong in the end. The oil brings the color and grain of the beautiful wood perfectly to life. Now it's done. The table from Rüster is finished. There are many working hours in it, craftsmanship and the love for wood. With his apprentice, Heiko Kircher has chosen six boards from his wood warehouse. They form the floor and the side parts of the boat. Now the basic structure is drawn up with a template, the so-called roughing. A little higher, a little higher. No, so, so, so high, yes, so. Yes, now it's good. Then we sawed a pattern board so that we didn't have to tear it out by hand every time, or tear it. We have such a pattern board for each, for the lower side, the upper side and for the floor, so that we can lay it straight on it, like a template. A lower and an upper side, that's something special. This means that two boards are lying on top of each other on both sides. This makes the boat higher than the conventional boats, a double-walled boat. An idea of the Kircher family. This boat, this shape, my grandfather designed it. And the templates are all from my grandfather. And because this boat shape is so good, Heiko Kircher's father and Heiko Kircher themselves adopted this construction method. Then it's time to saw. These are the two floor parts, these are the two lower sides and these are the two upper sides. These are the six basic boards of the boat. And all the boards are specially marked. There are a total of three pairs of ribs in the boat, which keep the shape and give stability. And six such reinforcements for the floor, so that the floor keeps its shape. But before the floor reinforcements and the rib parts are made, the six roughly cut basic boards have to be planed. It's really straight at the right point, that the bevels are all correct afterwards, that everything really fits together exactly. But these are things that are not on a template, on a plan, but it's just a matter of taste, what you've been doing over the years. The bottom of the boat is particularly tricky. Since it consists of two parts, it would be fatal if they didn't fit 100% together. The six basic boards are now ready for assembly. What is missing are, among other things, the ribs, and they are made from other wood, from heavy oak. Oak wood is just a hard wood, much more robust, much more stable than pine wood. Because where the ribs sit afterwards, these are the bevels. And if there is a lot of pressure on this rib through the bevels afterwards, and if it were a pine wood or some soft wood, then they would probably crack. And the oak wood will hold. Just like the ribs and the rear part, the front part of the boat is also made of oak wood. The sawing of the individual parts is done by Heiko Kircher with a so-called band saw in his workshop. Not from oak, but from pine wood, the cross-strips, the floor reinforcements, are cut. Six pieces in total. The next morning. Heiko Kircher checks whether he has everything he needs for the assembly. So here we see almost the entire boat. We have the floor, we have the side, so the lower side, we have the upper side, we have the ribs, we have the head, we have the rear part, we have the reinforcements for the floor. Here we go, the actual boat construction with the underside. In addition to the a total of around 120 nails, Heiko Kircher also needs 160 screws for his boat. This is an environmentally friendly wood protection paint. I'm going to paint that on the underside now, because if I screw it up, there will never be any more paint. And that's just supposed to keep the boat longer, so that it can't fail at that point. Next, the floor reinforcements are fixed. And because the floor consists of two boards, they have to be pressed together very tightly with a special clamp before screwing on the reinforcements. Then it is screwed. 72 screws go into the underside of the boat alone, into the pre-drilled holes and thus hold the reinforcements. Now it is torn up exactly, i.e. recorded how the head and foot are supposed to look later. This is where the front and back of the boat walls come in. After sawing the edges, the head and foot are attached to the bottom of the boat. A special adhesive tape is also used, Terostat tape is the technical term. Papa has already used that. But glue alone is not enough. As you can see, that wouldn't be really stable enough. Here, too, screws are used again. The next step. This is hemp, and I turn it into a hemp cord. And that then seizes between the floor and the side, it seizes wonderfully. The floor and the lower side are the parts that are almost only in the water. And if the wood should work at some point, it develops quite big forces when it works, and it would give in somewhere, then the hemp goes along wonderfully and closes the gap again. Now it's time for the side parts. An art in itself, even if it looks simple. I now position the side and the floor exactly so that everything fits together. The side must not look too far down, it must not sit too high either, otherwise it doesn't fit with the slope, and then I press my hemp cord exactly in the middle, because it forms our seal. If everything fits exactly, then I can put the first nail. Now comes a very difficult part. The floorboards are bent down in the middle and up on the outside. This pushes the floor down, so that when I tighten the boat slightly up, it can't move here, so it's pressed down. That's the only way I can tighten it up. This work step is especially difficult at the front. Now I'm getting everything right, now the boat is nailed up at the front. The head is nailed pretty high, so that the boat runs well in the water afterwards, so that it has a nice bend. I prepare everything now, and nail by nail I turn the boat up, turn it together so that the side and the floor fit exactly. This is what makes a real boat. The boat is now bent. The shape is correct, but it doesn't hold yet. The three pairs of ribs made of oak wood are responsible for this. Yes, that has a certain appeal. When you put the thing together, everything fits together. What does it look like when it's finished? Did I draw it correctly? Did I choose the wood correctly? The upper side parts are the next thing to do. First, the special glue is applied, which serves as a sealant at the same time. Then the upper side boards are screwed with the lower ones. But to make it work as desired, they first have to be fastened by force. Now we've put the upper side down. They are now clamped so that they cannot slip. Then we first pull the upper side in the back and connect it with our back piece. And then we pull it in front and connect it with our head piece. By screwing it in, the upper side is completely attached to the lower side. The boat is now mainly under great tension at the front. Millimeter work for Heiko Kircher. Especially at the front, where the tension is greatest, large nails have to go in. Now everything is screwed so that the upper side parts fit perfectly. The greatest tension is out, the supports and clamps can be removed. Now quickly saw off the excess with a trained gaze and the boat is ready. At least the rough version. The third day. Now it's time for the detail work. First, the two rudder rods are cut out. Now I'm working out the rudder rods so that they get a nice shape, so that they look better visually. I have grooves here where my fork sits afterwards, my rudder fork. That's up there, here's the handle, and then the rudder blade comes down. Then it's their turn, the rudder blades for the two rudders. Now only the seat benches are missing. They consist of two pine boards. One seat bench will later go in the middle, the other in the back. The most important, yet missing detail is the so-called triangle bar, which goes into the seam of the two floor boards. It is tacked quite banally. This also seals the last possible weak spot. Now the wood protection paint comes on. It is essential for the boat. First it comes to the outside. You need it, because if you don't treat the boat at all, then there would be a mess. And the weathering influences will really break the boat. The rudder holders. Without them, of course, nothing works. Two and a half days of work. The five-meter-long wooden boat is ready. Just as the grandfather built it more than 50 years ago. Stack run on the Baggersee. The young man's journey can begin. First only with the boat builder. After all, Heiko Kircher has to check whether everything is really okay with his boat. And the boss is satisfied. All good, all perfect. All perfect, super tight, all good, no drop of water.