Ulf Stühmer is the Peterson Agent for Germany. Unlike many retailers who may just use their machinery for demonstrations, Ulf uses his Peterson mill to cut timber for his carpentry business. In the last couple of years Ulf has cut a variety of different, mainly European, timbers. He's taken his Peterson mill to a lot of different locations, met a lot of great people, and pulled off a lot of nice boards.
These glimpses focus on those logs of a larger size. He has generated so much interest on his Peterson portable sawmill that he has been filmed for a tv documentary, and even been asked for his autograph!!
1. Big Oak 1.2m - Kiel, Germany
This log was approximately 4 metres long and cut into 10cm x 10cm and 8cm x 8cm beams. The owner kept the timber for fence posts and for building a carport. He also sold some of the smaller beams for horse stables.
2. Linde timber
This knotty 1.2m diameter log was cut into 50cm x 50cm blocks for seats. The seats were positioned around a table in the offices of Edin Jeans. When buyers came to look at the jeans they were invited to do so whilst sitting on blocks cut by a Peterson mill.
3. Kastanie Timber (Chestnut) - Lubeck, Germany
It's not always what you know but who you know. A friend of Ulf's works for the city gardeners, felling old sick trees in park areas. This tree, roughly 1.1m diameter, needed to be disposed of so Ulf was able to get the contract to mill the tree for free and keep the timber for himself. Not a bad deal!
4. Monstrous Oak
This 450-year old tree weighed 10 tonnes, measuring 5.5m long and 1.8m dia. Ulf was able to recover 7cm3 of sawn timber from this one log. He had expected more up to 10cm3 but some of the wood had been damaged by a lightening strike. The tree was felled to make way for a new highway and Ulf paid 200€ for the tree and kept all the timber to use in his carpentry business - in this particular case, staircases and tabletops. The contractors for the highway were happy for Ulf to mill the timber as they would have had difficulty removing the log without him. Ulf was filmed using his Peterson sawmill on this log by a German film crew, and the documentary was later screened on main TV.
5. Linde
A dying tree needed to be felled so Ulf was called in to take it down. Measuring 60cm dia. the wood was milled into boards for carving. As linde wood is so soft, Ulf made it into 20cm x 8cm blocks, ideal for carving.
6. Oak
This was in the backyard of a house with views over the Bay of Kiel. Ulf was cutting 14cm x 14cm beams for use in construction of old-style German house building. The gardener of the house made a lot of money selling the beams! You can see the mill cutting on uneven terrain, handling it with no sweat at all. Ulf charges 42€ per cm for this type of job, which is a standard rate in Germany.
7. Beech
Located in the middle of the forest, this 1.2m dia. tree had to be felled in case it fell down over a road that was being built. It was also part of a pruning exercise, selectively felling older sick trees to let younger healthy trees grow. All the timber cut on the portable sawmill was used for carpentry.
