First, a gang saw cuts the trunks into planks: Several parallel saw blades produce several planks in one process. Then, the wood can be stacked with gaps between planks and dries for 1 to 2 years. Beech wood is steamed like in a pressure cooker to improve its mechanical properties. Thereby, the wood turns darker and acquires the typical brown-reddish colour.

The dried planks are raw with some cracks, with the bark still forming the edge. In order to minimise waste, each plank is inspected. A sawing machine is programmed to cut long laths from the planks. The laths are needed in different lengths: The sawing system automatically recognises the length of each raw batten and cuts out a suitable length if possible. The slats whiz along a long conveyor belt and are automatically ejected from the belt at a specific point depending on their length: The result is a stack of slats of the same length.
The result is rough-sawn slats on which the strong marks of the saw teeth are still visible.

The raw slats still have imperfections such as knotholes or missing edges. These are marked with fluorescent paint. The automatic saw recognises the markings and cuts the slats to a new, suitable length.

The cut laths are now placed in the planing machine, where they are given the required shape. For the Hangbird frame parts, the planing machine planes all four sides straight and breaks the edges. The extraction system ensures that the work is free of wood chips or cuttings.

The planing blade is clamped in a cutterhead, which is inserted into the planing machine and gives the wooden mouldings the required shape. With our Hangbird frame parts, this is simply a square cross-section with chamfered edges. However, the planer can also produce elaborate mouldings.

How the moulding looks after planing depends on the planing knife used. There is a wide variety of planing knives for the different mouldings. The workshop collects the knives assigned to the different customers in a card index.

After planing, the frame parts are sanded. In the sanding machine, the wood is processed from all four sides at the same time.

This is the extraction system that is connected to the wood workshop. During work steps that produce wood flour or chippings, suction hoses ensure that all the wood residue ends up in a large wood chip silo. They can later be processed into wood pellets, for example.