First result of experimenting with splitting wood with a froe. The material you see under the froe is the next project. Making gates of split acacia. For the roof the kind of wood we chose is sweet chestnut. Length is about 30 centimeters per piece. The tool we used is a froe. Wooden handled & the bit is to be slammed into the top of a segment of tree. The result should be a shingle. You can even the rough surface a bit through honing with the cutting device you see in the previous picture. We are showing results not process now. The showing of process will be the next level in showing what can be done with natural materials. For process we will need youtube or so. Anyhow Ian and me were surprised about the speed with which things could be done. While I was welding and grinding away at the froe, Ian was making the frame under the shingles. The frame you can't see. Froe and test set-up were realized within 2 hours. The froe bit is made of an old blade spring of a car. It does not need to be so very sharp. It's just a grinding so the profile of the froe has a splitting effect. It will keep on working for ever probably. We calculate we need to make 1200 of those shingles for the porch roof to be. It started raining in the days after we created this experimental test roof. We put a plastic bucket under the shingles. Not a drop came through. In principle a good result. Except we don't know if sweet chestnut is the advisable kind of wood. There are shingles made of evergreens that are pretty much the best. We will end our experiment with a definite choice of wood for the porch within the next supposedly nice months. Spring and all. No more snow!!! ;)

Cat inspection team member

32 cubic meters of wood has arrived. Dried in a drying chamber to 12% water content. There is every form of wood we need for finishing the house from top to bottom. The place where it is stacked, is a location we like to be empty because it is in front of the kitchen. It reminds us that we are still living in a building location.
The cats like all change to their environment and inspect every new change with carefull attention. Here Pippy is indicating there is something wrong with the location of a particular piece.
Now the wood is dried to the core according to a computer program. They had been in a drying chamber, of which relevance I wasn't aware before. It appears that wood shrinks 8% through drying. Over a length of 12 meters..... What that does to your construction I left to imagination. I followed the advice of the architect to take the much more expensive dry wood. The cats agree.