Trail Ridge Timber Frames, Inc.
Germany Tour 2002
Sponsored by Mafell Tools
Trail Ridge Timber Frames, Inc. Germany Tour 2002 Sponsored by Mafell Tools |
| This spring Trail Ridge
Timber Frames, Inc. and several members of the Timber
Framer's Guild of North America (and one representative
of Scotland) toured historic timber frames in Germany.
The tour was sponsored, in part, by Mafell Tools. Mafell
tools, a German company, makes the best timber framing
tools on the planet. They also make many other quality
wood working tools. Thanks again Mafell for the fine time
and also to Herr Bly for herding a bunch of
"yankees", a couple Texans (and one
representative of Scotland) over the German countryside.
Those of us from Trail Ridge Timber Frames, Inc. were,
myself, Mark Miller, and Greg Fencl. For two weeks, from morning until dinner,we toured timber frames (some 900 years old and still quite habitable), castles, barns, timber frame shops, the Mafell plant, and still many of the "die hard" Guild guys would go barn hunting after hours. I was most impressed by how well kept the timber frames were. Very few of them were "plumb" (straight up and down). They leaned this way and that and timbers bulged and sagged, but all this just added to the charm. I came back with these impressions: The German country side reminded me of my childhood home of Missouri. The Autobahn was not that fast-- we barely got over 60 mph and even had to sit in traffic a lot! You can buy beer everywhere; vending machines in highschools, McDonalds, one timber frame shop even had two pallets of the brew sitting in the shop. And, of course practically every building is at least 500 years old and a timber frame! I hope you enjoy the following pages and pictures as much as we did being there. |
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The first few days we battled jet lag and saw some fine examples of German timber frame homes. |
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One of the early highlights of the trip was an open air museum where we watched a water powered sawmill in action. |
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We toured Burg Hohensollern (to the left) and many other villages in the Black Forest on this part of the trip. |
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The people at the left have nothing to do with Rottweil. I just thought it was a nice picture. So did my wife. Rottweil, on the other hand ,offered one feature of the whole trip that we all enjoyed quite a bit - a 900 year old timber frame being restored |
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Looking from atop the old town walls you can see the heart of old Nurnburg. We spent the last few days in Nurnburg and surrouding area. The main attraction was a wood working and building trade show. |