Medieval Wood Riving - An Attempt to Recreate Craftsmanship
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originally shared here on
In a lot of ways, this video is boring, useless, and a colossal waste of time.
In many other ways, however, this is compelling to the point of fascination.
A Swedish carpenter discovers giant 13 meter rafter supports inside an 800 year old church. He thinks to himself, “I wonder how they were able to use such beautiful wood in order to create this.”
What does he do? He enlists the help of 3 fellow master carpenters, who in turn locate a suitably similar tree, discuss their hypothesis around the tools and techniques used, and then execute those ideas.
This video is emblematic of a style of YouTube video I’ve been obsessed with lately: how do things work? Not just old tech, but extremely old tech.
I’ve never thought to myself, “how did people used to build big buildings?”, but I’m sure glad somebody else not only had that thought, but decided to document it for others to learn from.