# Ancient lumber and logging



## Swordfry (Sep 18, 2015)

I am imagining my world to have around Bronze Age technology, but with very very little metal tools. A big thing in this world are hill forts as every city of my two main races is a hill fort with wooden outside walls and wooden huts and buildings inside. Basically how did ancient peoples go about their logging and lumber industry? When exactly did actual planks of lumber start to be developed and used? Or, for a more ancient setting like mine, would all buildings, walls, etc, be constructed like out bundled sticks and logs rather than planks of wood? I hope I am making sense here, lol.


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## CupofJoe (Sep 18, 2015)

Planks have been around for ever... even back to neolithic times. There are stitched together plank boats. But those planks were rare, expensive and difficult to make, as each one was effectively carved and formed by hand.
I would guess that cheap planks come around with metal saws and maybe even mechanical cutting. Before that it was down to log splitting to make rough boards [that for some reason I want to call "Strikes"].
As for building; Wattle and Daub and Adobe spring to mind as methods that were possible and are available at the time.
From what I've seen of re-creations of Northern European Iron Age buildings; logs were used for the structure of the building with wattle and daub panels in between.


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## Russ (Sep 18, 2015)

Planks go back a long way, well into the bronze age. At that point they were likely cut from logs and larger timber with two man saws.  If you look at say Egyptian ships in the bronze age they had planks as did this find from England:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Bronze_Age_Boat

There are bronze age palaces that had planks for flooring, but they are pretty rare.


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## TheokinsJ (Sep 20, 2015)

There was a very interesting documentary I watched on GuÃ©ldon castle in France; I'd highly recommend it: to get to the point; this castle is being made by modern craftsmen and artisans, using medieval methods. No power tools, no electricity, no cars, cranes, modern tools or anything- everything is done by hand using the traditional methods.
During the documentary they go through every stage of the building process, from stone-work, blacksmithing to carpentry. The carpenter and the loggers fell the trees with axes, and then split the logs using wedges and cut them further with their axes. Saws were NOT used. In the documentary, the carpenter makes a medieval cupboard and table, using nothing but his axe- he gets a fallen log, splits it with two metal wedges, and then splits it, using his axe, into PERFECT planks.
Saws were expensive and almost never used, as others have said, but contrary to popular belief, planks were not difficult by any means to make, even in the Bronze Age. Everything was done with one tool; an axe. Nails weren't used either- everything was fitted together using wooden pegs. People were very resourceful back then- tools weren't in great supply, and anything made from metal was horribly expensive- you worked with what you had.

In answer to your other question; I'm sure in bronze-age Britain for example, the walls on hill-forts etc. were constructed with a mixture of raw logs- unshaped and unrefined- dug into an earthen rampart. As for houses and buildings; you'd probably find their walls were made from wattle and daub; a lattice of thin sticks covered in a mixture of animal dung, clay and straw.


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## Swordfry (Sep 21, 2015)

TheokinsJ said:


> There was a very interesting documentary I watched on GuÃ©ldon castle in France; I'd highly recommend it: to get to the point; this castle is being made by modern craftsmen and artisans, using medieval methods. No power tools, no electricity, no cars, cranes, modern tools or anything- everything is done by hand using the traditional methods.
> During the documentary they go through every stage of the building process, from stone-work, blacksmithing to carpentry. The carpenter and the loggers fell the trees with axes, and then split the logs using wedges and cut them further with their axes. Saws were NOT used. In the documentary, the carpenter makes a medieval cupboard and table, using nothing but his axe- he gets a fallen log, splits it with two metal wedges, and then splits it, using his axe, into PERFECT planks.
> Saws were expensive and almost never used, as others have said, but contrary to popular belief, planks were not difficult by any means to make, even in the Bronze Age. Everything was done with one tool; an axe. Nails weren't used either- everything was fitted together using wooden pegs. People were very resourceful back then- tools weren't in great supply, and anything made from metal was horribly expensive- you worked with what you had.



Thanks, I'll have to watch that video, sounds very useful. I remember watching one just like that, with a team building a medieval castle with medieval tools, methods, and technology, but it was somewhere in the US. Sadly, the last I heard the project was cancelled. Sucks.


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