Fun fact, this is the same root as Riven.
Or rift.
Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
21–30 of 93 posts
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#22This 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 k…
Riving 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EpVIEyYiSs
Also, baseball bats.
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#23This 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 k…
Where 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!
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#24This 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 k…
Where 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 it…
I'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.
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#25Reminds me of a scene in "Happy People", a documentary about life in the Russian taiga, where the hunter fashioned a pair of skis by splitting a tree. Link if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cPhWpprLmM
The word ski even etymologically comes from a split piece of wood. The cognates in German (Scheit) and apparently also Icelandic (skið) and English (shide) actually still mean that.
(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic...)
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#26This 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 k…
Where 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 it…
If 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.
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#27This 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 k…
Riving 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EpVIEyYiSs
Also 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.
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ahh, 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.
Sadistic? 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.
I think he meant sadistic purely in the context of woodworking, not in the context of military.
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#29This 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 k…
Where 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 it…
Most people have a hobby. The kind of people who hang out on HN are the kind of people who'll obsessively learn everything there is to know about their hobby.
Re: Riving, a Viking-age woodworking technique
#30http://www.greenwoodworking.com/RivingArticle Jennie Alexander, an amazing woodworker who just passed away last week, wrote on this topic extensively. Check out her books 'Make a Chair from a Tree'
Her profile on Lost Art Press is a fantastic read:
https://blog.lostartpress.com/2017/05/25/meet-the-author-jen...