活动名称：木艺木趣国际研讨会暨展览会
时间地点：2011年10月19日，印度班加罗尔J N Tata多功能礼堂
演讲嘉宾：Andrea Klein
演讲题目：The treasure of special stem assortments - lost knowledge of the past

摘要：In former times, there was a huge knowledge of the advantage and proper usage of "abnormal" growth patterns and the utilization of all parts of the tree. People of numerous crafts were ambitiously searching for curved and bended tree stems, branch-stem junctions of specific angles and root-stem junctions.

They were aware of the disadvantages and the loss of strength by cutting out or bending wood for curved timber used in shipbuilding or in many other woodworks. The stiffness of branch-stem junctions for handles or other tools will never be reached by any other manmade wood junction. The high tensile strength one may want to achieve for curved designs will nowhere be higher than by using root-stem junctions.

This used to be general knowledge since early times. Even Bronze Age tool handles were made out of branch-stem junctions. In Hallstatt, Austria, it was evident, that people working in the salt mines were carefully selecting the trees where the tool handles were cut out.

Due to the process of industrialization and the wish for standardization and fast processing, hardly any wood deviating from a more or less straight design is used any more. This means, that just a small amount of the mechanical potential is used by humans. This might furthermore lead to a replacement of wood. It is important to realize that there is a specific application for every habitus, for every part of a tree and for every tree species. Being aware of this, you will get out the highest performance of wood for every application.