Thread: Old tools in dolomites italy

Thanks for the pics WS - brings back quite a few memories.

My Dads' family live in the Dolomites where two of my uncles were and 3 cousins are wood workers.
One cousin operates from a basement workshop at home and does mainly door and double/triple glazed window joinery.
PPhouse.jpg
This is his place and you can just see the drive way entrance to his workshop on the RHS in the photo
The joinery all done using machinery including a 4 sided planing/moulding machine that is fun to watch

Two cousins own a large business that uses a Hundeger Wood working machine which can handle up to 600 x 600 mm x 13 m wooden billets in one end and the parts to make a complete houses come out the other.
MAchine.jpg
There's not a hand tool in the factory as the machinery never makes a mistake - only the operators or architects make mistakes.
Sometimes wood gets jammed in the machine and they hack it out with a chainsaw.

They have a contract with local parks to build and rebuild mountain hiking trail refuge huts and this is an example of the smallest one they make.
MountainHut.jpg
They used to build these on site and had to mountain climb their way up to the site every day and bring the materials up by flying fox.
These days they just helicopter them in.

Their main work is replacement roofs and the offer a complete service, removal of old roof which is burned to heat water that is used to heat 20 other nearby factory buildings .
It starts by taking laser based measurements outside, and then going into the ceiling cavity and performing a laser scan of the internals.
Then they take the data back to the Hundeger and plug it in, a day later - there's all the timbers for the roof.
Some times sections of the roof are built in the factory and assembled using a crane on site - other times they build the whole roof on site.

They use a lot of dovetails cut by the Hundeger in the joinery.
BDtails.jpg

Their main work is roofing but the Hundeger can do anything in wood from this 30m long bridge to carving out planter box panels.
Bridge2.jpg
flowerBoxes.jpg
This is one of the cousins, Rocco, who in his spare time is a winter time mountaineering guide. He says, mountain climbing in the winter is more fun.

I have been there 13 times but only once, for a week, in winter and while I was there there was no snow.

Originally Posted by BobL

Thanks for the pics WS - brings back quite a few memories.

My Dads' family live in the Dolomites where two of my uncles were and 3 cousins are wood workers.
One cousin operates from a basement workshop at home and does mainly door and double/triple glazed window joinery.
PPhouse.jpg
This is his place and you can just see the drive way entrance to his workshop on the RHS in the photo
The joinery all done using machinery including a 4 sided planing/moulding machine that is fun to watch

Two cousins own a large business that uses a Hundeger Wood working machine which can handle up to 600 x 600 mm x 13 m wooden billets in one end and the parts to make a complete houses come out the other.
MAchine.jpg
There's not a hand tool in the factory as the machinery never makes a mistake - only the operators or architects make mistakes.
Sometimes wood gets jammed in the machine and they hack it out with a chainsaw.

They have a contract with local parks to build and rebuild mountain hiking trail refuge huts and this is an example of the smallest one they make.
MountainHut.jpg
They used to build these on site and had to mountain climb their way up to the site every day and bring the materials up by flying fox.
These days they just helicopter them in.

Their main work is replacement roofs and the offer a complete service, removal of old roof which is burned to heat water that is used to heat 20 other nearby factory buildings .
It starts by taking laser based measurements outside, and then going into the ceiling cavity and performing a laser scan of the internals.
Then they take the data back to the Hundeger and plug it in, a day later - there's all the timbers for the roof.
Some times sections of the roof are built in the factory and assembled using a crane on site - other times they build the whole roof on site.

They use a lot of dovetails cut by the Hundeger in the joinery.
BDtails.jpg

Their main work is roofing but the Hundeger can do anything in wood from this 30m long bridge to carving out planter box panels.
Bridge2.jpg
flowerBoxes.jpg
This is one of the cousins, Rocco, who in his spare time is a winter time mountaineering guide. He says, mountain climbing in the winter is more fun.

I have been there 13 times but only once, for a week, in winter and while I was there there was no snow.

Thanks BobL the Craftsmen of the Dolomites have quickly adapted to the latest machinery, it probably was developed here,many of the old structures still stand and are inhabited and local pine and sruce and fir is used extensively, the fitouts and cabinetry well im stoked and tbe snow is great this year, Rossco

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Sorry I wasn't meaning to detract from your post about the old tools which I thought was great.

These people are indeed very industrious and crafty.
Two of my cousins run a "We print anything on plastic" business which consists of a large factory on the outskirts of a small alpine village. Next door is a factory that makes custom steel flanges for the oil and gas industry.
A few k's away there is a winter sports town where a 12mW thermal power plant burns tree branches trimmed from roadside trees ro generate makes electricity and drives a water coolant recirculating loop around the village to provide hot water and wintertime heating. A well as not covering the snow fields with black soot has removed the import of 100000L of heating oil a year for this town.
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