Karin and I went out to Margot and Olle Nyberg on Djurö, as they had a felled oak I could pick the best parts from. Eric Andersson in bergvik - an acquaintance of my parents-in-law gave me the tip, and also came by to assist in the splitting of the heavy log.
 

The log is split radially

   
Parts of the oak will do as hull planks. Skulderlev one had certain hull planks in oak. Maybe I'll make wedges and board clamps out of the oak too. One starts by placing a sharp wedge or and axe head in one end, and then follows suit with more wedges, as the crack widens. When the crack reaches the top side, one continues there. Later on, fibres need to be cut, to make the log split apart. The halves of the trunk are cracked in a similar way, but the crack opens up from the marrow side. We didn't have enought time to finish the job, but I must go there again thursday. Towards the end of the day, we went to Eric's farm, some distance away, and inspected a 2,5 metre oak stock which he recently had felled. It will probably serve as the lower part of the aft stem. As this part will consist of core wood, I believe it's allowed to saw it out. In the viking age, one probably would have used axes to clear out the surplus wood around the part, and so, in principle, this would be the same as using saws. The idea behind this shipbuilding project is to use modern methods and tools, as long as the pieces ready for assembly wouldn't have different qualities of those pieces that would result from me using viking age methods.

I and Eric are cracking the log, my daugther Yrsa watches and Karin takes pictures

 
Day 2

Went out to Djurö and was present as Eric sawed through the log, using this his much commendable Czech sawmill machinery. It was exciting to watch the block appear, as you never might know the amount of stumps of dead twigs and branches that may linger inside the log. The block appeared nice enough, with only one dead twig stump, which surely will end up outside the finished part. The block was sawed out with a large enough margin to permit finer detailing later. The end of the stump was coated in gruel to stop all too sudden drying, and placed in shadow until the transport was due the day after. The remaining hours was spent up at the Nyberg family, working with the splitting of the log there.

Day 3

The stock at Nybergs was split, and then I met the parents-in-law, who came out with a trailer

Eric Andersson

My father-in-law, Hasse Thorell, helps Eric with the loading (bildtext)

 
Using Eric's tractor, the block was loaded down in Bergvik, and then as much as possible of the radially split oak up at Nyberg's was loaded on top. Then, the whole load was transported to the buillding site at the summer house in Vagnhärad. Despite a steep grassy downhill slope, Hasse managed to drive the car and the trailer down to the water, and we unloaded everything down into the water, trussed up with rope.

Day 4

I borrowed the car and trailer of my parents-in-law and drove up to Djurö for the remaining oak timber at Nybergs

Margot and Olle Nyberg

A great thanks to Olle and Magit Nyberg, who furnished the oak for the project, and to Eric, who furnished more oak and who sawed up one of the logs, free of charge.