# Quartercut without a saw



## Longknife (Oct 25, 2010)

I was reading forum member phinds's site a while ago (if you haven't visited it, do that, it's absolutely amazing). Anyway, I was reading his article about true quartercutting explained with this picture









I have never heard of this method being used and Paul also doubted that this technique is ever used in commercial lumber operations because it is just too cumbersome and wasteful.

However, it reminded me of how the vikings cut the boards for their ships. They did not have the technology for sawing planks out of a log. Instead they cleaved the log with wedges into halfs, quarters, 1/8 and finally to 1/16 ending up with pieces like this









These pieces were hewn with an axe....









... and planed with a tool very much like a spokeshave











With this method they made perfect quartercut boards that enabled them to build lightweight but strong ships like these


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## mdntrdr (Dec 22, 2009)

Very cool!

Vikings did not have handsaw technology? :blink:


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## Longknife (Oct 25, 2010)

mdntrdr said:


> Very cool!
> 
> Vikings did not have handsaw technology? :blink:


They knew saws. A toolbox from 10th century has been found in Sweden and it contained both a handsaw and a hacksaw. However the steel was not good enough to allow for the teeth to be set and make a saw efficient enough to saw through a log.


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## Streamwinner (Nov 25, 2008)

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.


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## firemedic (Dec 26, 2010)

Man I love seeing how they did it back in the day. Very very interesting, thanks for sharing!

That type of work and knowledge is all but lost!

~tom


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