7 ms·
This is an interesting article, but riving is not specifically Viking. It was the primary method of producing workable wood blanks from tree trunks in every civ
by GlenTheMachine 8y ago
This is an interesting article, but riving is not specifically Viking. It was the primary method of producing workable wood blanks from tree trunks in every civilization that used wood blanks. Which is to say, it was used all over Europe and Asia (at least), for at least the last 2000-plus years. I'm not as familiar with the woodworking traditions of Africa or pre-European-contact North or South America, so I don't know whether they used wood blanks.
It's also used today by "green woodworkers" - woodworkers who specialize in building using non-dried wood. This mostly includes chair makers, but also some others. You can buy riving tools from a lot of places. Lie-Nielsen makes a very nice riving froe. You can also find antique ones at almost any antique woodworking tool show.
- vinceguidry 8y agoThe article was hosted on hurstwic.org, which is a website dedicated to teaching Viking martial arts. It does not claim that riving is purely a Viking technique. I suppose it could have mentioned that, but I doubt the author ever considered their article making it to the front page of HN.
- metaphor 8y agoAhh, makes sense why the author would make such a sadistic comparison: Making a few cuts with the axe into some of the oak logs on the site made me realize that a leg bone would be no match for this axe.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoSadistic? Ancient armies regularly hacked at each other with these battle axes, along with swords, spears, and other sharp weapons. It was as normal as guns are today.
- geoffpado 8y agoI think he meant sadistic purely in the context of woodworking, not in the context of military.
- evilduck 8y agoI'm not even sure it's about battle, I think it's just being aware of where misplaced a axe blow will end up (missing your target when chopping wood and hitting yourself in the shin or foot is a common injury).
- parsthis 8y agoOh and boy has that happened to me. Not an axe specifically but a machete!
- TimTheTinker 8y agoI thought he or she was calling severing a leg with a battle axe sadistic (which I disagree with, depending on the context).
- metaphor 8y agoGiven what I believed to be strict woodworking context and before GP shined light on the combat training mission of the host organization, that's exactly what I was thinking. I hadn't realized that the intent of the photojournal was to demonstrate manual riving as a means of fabricating a weapon handle.
- metaphor 8y agoCorrect. I own a table saw and have been working with wood as a matter of practical necessity for the past several months while renovating a home; this article wouldn't be the first time I've stumbled upon the term riving in the context of woodworking. So when a 17-image photojournal describing a manual woodworking procedure concludes with a battle axe pose remarking on its ability to chop through a leg bone, the prose struck me as aggressively misplaced. I mean table saw and chain saw accidents are relatively commonplace and surely claim a fair number of limbs every year, but the efficiency of a woodworking tool in its misuse case isn't typically paraded as a metric of merit...unless you're an organization dedicated to combat training...then the prose makes complete sense.
- jdietrich 8y agoRiving is still used for producing timber that needs to have perfectly straight grain with minimal runout, most notably the tops of acoustic guitars. The difference in stiffness between a rived and sawn top can be drastic, with commensurate benefits in tone. http://www.lutherie.net/frankford.runout.html http://www.lutherie.net/frankford.runout.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EpVIEyYiSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EpVIEyYiSs
- logfromblammo 8y agoAlso, baseball bats.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoAlso for the production of English long bows for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. They carefully included heartwood for the front and sapwood for the rear of the bow. That gave the bow the most strength and benefits of a modern laminate bow in a single piece of wood.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoWood roofing shakes are riven.
- wott 8y agoAnd wine barrels.
- AngryData 8y agoIt is also important for making straight arrows that don't warp or shatter either, especially in the olden days when arrows were made by hand and thus very expensive/time consuming.
- 321yawaworht 8y agoWhere do you guys come from? How do you know all this stuff? It's so interesting and I'm often surprised at the diversity of knowledge, experience and backgrounds on HN. For even the most esoteric of subjects folks here will have interesting input. I love to try and experiment, and like people who are passionate about things. Just wanted to get it off my chest. I love this place and it makes me appreciate life and its peculiarities more. When I was in high school I dreaded only observing greasy nerds interested in techy stuff. It's been a while but HN has really shown a different side of the world to me. Thanks!
- analog31 8y agoWell, I'm far from being as knowledgeable as some folks on HN, but have a lot of factual knowledge about odd things. My only advice is curiosity and reading, notably about "real" subjects. That could include well written fiction. I don't plan to read about specific things, just let my brain be filled with lots of stuff. Also when you see old people doing interesting work, talk to them if they don't mind it. At my current job, I made a point of talking with the old-timers about the technology, and gained a lot of practical knowledge that would otherwise be lost.
- samstave 8y agoI'm ready to hear about some of your odd areas of interest that otherwise I may never think of... Please post something for pique my interest, thanks.
- GlenTheMachine 8y agoI'm a very beginning (you might even say aspiring) woodworker. My hobbies are that, and farming. Which are completely different from what I do at work.
- CPLX 8y agoIf you're at all into woodworking it's just a matter of time before an evening in the YouTube rabbit hole leads you to riving, or Alaskan chainsaw mills, or Wood Mizer demo videos, or silent Japanese guys that are wickedly good at joinery.
- monochromatic 8y agoRiving is the right way to start if you’re making your own dowels too.
- tripletmass 8y agoRive first, true the dowel later; use a trivial cylindrical hydraulic cavitation method, extract dowels...only what trivial method was that again? Packing group twice, cavitate once mon. I suppose you take off your ring and stick it on one side of the branch, push it with a series of hardwood staves while a friend brakes the stock so that a density minimum always appears true, ahead of the ring, and then continue until the limit theorem packing fails to brake?
- monochromatic 8y agoWhat?
- lostlogin 8y agoThis must explain why so many broom handles are crap - they have been cut.
- VBprogrammer 8y agoMy house built in around 1880 still has lath and plaster ceilings (wooden battens with plaster applied over the top of it). The lath is made from riven oak because it needs the strength at quite small dimensions.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago> It's also used today by "green woodworkers" - woodworkers who specialize in building using non-dried wood. What's the advantage of that technique?
- GlenTheMachine 8y agoThe wood is stronger, as stated by several post above, because the wood fibers are intact all the way through the piece. This is important for chairs in particular, because they take quite large stresses for their size and weight. Apparently green wood is easier to carve as well - I don't have direct experience of that. And finally, it can be steamed and bent. That's how you get the curved wood pieces in chairs.