Going to Krakow

This is a lot of scenery that we saw on the way to Krakow. We went there on  a bus.

They have a lot of wind tubines  in Poland. A wind turbine turns wind into electrical energy.

This is the outside of a church in Kwiatonlu. It was built in 1659.

These are grooved shingles. They are all over the building, on the walls and the roof.

This is a window, and a door in the church.

These are scenes from inside the church. The first one is called the screen.

The second one is called the altar.

The third is a painting on the ceiling of the church.

The fourth is a painting of Adam and Eve getting banished from Eden.

This is how the farmers stack hay to dry it.

This is the second church that we went to. It was built in 1280.

This is a huge beam made from a big tree.

This is a 1000 year old post inside the church.

This is a picture of an old castle in Krakow.

This is a picture of the arrow slits. Arrow slits are cut in the wall of a castle: on the inner side they are big and on the outer side they are small to prevent the archers from being shot.

 This is a picture of the main square inside the castle.

This is a church where a trumpeter during a war was shot with an arrow.

Life at Skansen Vilage

These are fire engines from the olden days.  They are  in this museum that has all these houses like Sturbridge village.

This is the town’s forge. A forge is a place that a blacksmith works. A blacksmith shapes metal. In the olden days most things made out of metal were shaped by the blacksmith. It was an important part of the town.

This is inside the forge. In the forge there are a lot of tools for blacksmithing. It’s hot in there.

This is an old fashioned grinding wheel for sharpening tools. One person cranked the handle and the other one sharpened the tools.

This is the cantilever saw. On the cantilever saw there is a notched log with 2 support beams on either side of it making it look like an upside down V. The cantilever saw is hard work to run. They cut the logs into pieces

Here's a really long log ready to be sawn

This is Ellen

This is Gerry

This is Barbara - she is a good friend of my Mom.

This is Josh

This is a drawknife. Unlike other knives, you pull it towards you. You usually use it for peeling and shaping logs or pegs.

This is a place where you pound the pegs through little holes that are a little sharp and when you pound it,  it cuts off the excess making it a perfectly round peg.

First Days in Poland

Hi everybody. Here’s my blog. It’s about Poland. The plane ride was very boring – I had to wait for 5 hours in between planes. There is a six hour time difference in Poland. Here’s a view of Poland from the airplane.

I am here timber framing in Poland, and having fun. My mom is the timber frame project director.  Here is my  first morning meeting

This is the model of the synagogue that we are going to rebuild; a synagogue is a Jewish church. It is going to go in the Museum of the Polish Jews in Warsaw.

What I did for work my first day was making pegs, and planing boards. A peg is a piece of wood that is a cylinder for holding timber frame joints together .

A plane is a piece of metal that has a blade that sticks out under it to take the roughness off a board and to make it smoother.

 I can’t speak the language – it’s wierd!