Round rod milling machine

About the sound

Up until its shutdown in 1983 the Sawmill Remblinghausen in Meschede (North Rhine-Westphalia) manufactured wooden handles for brooms and rakes using the round rod milling machine made by the Gubisch-Werke in Liegnitz in the1920s. The machine was powered by an electric wound-rotor motor (Bergmann Elektricitäts-Werke A. G. Berlin, 1920).
The sawn timber is inserted into the machine, where rollers direct the wood into rotating cutter heads. They cut the material until it is brought into its round stick shape.
The rotating blades shaping the wood create the machine's milling sound.

The Sawmill Remblinghausen is a heritage-protected building in Meschede (Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia). The oldest part of the sawmill still standing today was built in 1809. Up until its shutdown in 1983 the sawmill threshed clover and it manufactured lumber, boards, wooden wheels and wooden tools. Today the sawmill still has its system of line shafts and belts for power transmission, which extends throughout the entire building, as well as an ensemble of historical machines from the wood processing business and threshing equipment of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In 1987 the sawmill was placed under heritage-protection. In 1994 the Sawmill-Association of Remblinghausen took over the sawmill and restored it.

Sound recordist: Konrad Gutkowski/Julian Blaschke
Photographer: Konrad Gutkowski/Julian Blaschke
Video recordist: Konrad Gutkowski/Julian Blaschke