Lately I've been looking into the floor plans and interior design of old houses. This is something difficult to research, because these are functioning houses and as such have often been remodeled several times. Fortunately, I have access to some old books from the 1800s, where the Author was able to see many buildings in a relatively undisturbed state.

Of particular interest is the Kitchen along with the cooking range and how the exhaust is dealt with.

There are 2 common arrangements and variations of them for the kitchen. I'll classify them as "ALemannic" and "Burgundian"

In the Alemannic arrangement, the kitchen is 2 full stories in height. the exhaust from the cooking fires drafts slowly into the top of the kitchen where there are either holes in the top of the walls (Rouchschlitz) or the ceiling is arched an has a hole in the top with a very small chimney sticking a few inches over the floor of the attic (gwölb)
This is lousy, smoke lingers for a long time and everything gets stained with smoke. This arrangement was used as late as the 1970s in some old houses. The upper story has beamwork (Rouchni) from which meat is hung and smoked. The whole arrangement is called a smoke-kitchen (Rouch-Chuechä, Rouchhuus)

The Burgundian arrangement is better. The kitchen is only a single story in height. Above the cooking range is a giant pyramid-shaped chimney hood made of wooden planks pegged to a beam framework and plastered on the outside to seal it off (Bretterkamin). the chimney extends a few feet over the roof itself and has a flap operated by a long pole reaching down to the kitchen. The cooking fire exhausts directly into this chimney and the smoke drafted much more efficiently. Meat is hung up inside the chimney hood.

Wooden chimneys are nothing special. A lot of cultures used them. But I find the whole concept fascinating.

Of special interest here is how the smoke is handled. In most cases where a big wooden chimney is used, the fire is simply placed in the base of the chimney and the smoke -along with most of its heat- is sucked straight out. Here, the fire is enclosed in a masonry stove which exhausts through a hole in the firewall into a large masonry heating oven (stubenofen) that is an effective mass heater. You don't have to have a secondary heating source, the waste heat from cooking will warn the oven for many hours. The exhaust then snakes back through a hole in the firewall into the kitchen. In the open kitchen, it just comes out through a hole in the wall and drafts freely through the room. Where the wooden chimney is used, there is often a tube of some sort that carries the smoke into the base of the chimney, so that it won't draft around through the room.

This is all interesting because this system has been in place since the early Middle Ages. Some scholars call this the "Burgundian Chimney" because it is found in places settled by the Burgundians, and not in Alemannic territories. But it can't have been a later Medieval development of the Burgundians, because it is most found in that region that fell out of Burgundian hands in the 12th century, specifically the southwest part of the Canton of Bern especially the western part of the Berner Oberland (The Bernese Alps)

So right now, I'm fascinated with wooden chimneys. IT's one of those things that you present to modern people, and they think it's a death trap. I guess the fact that some of them have been is use for over 500 years escapes us...

Here are some pictures showing the wooden chimney.
First, a picture from inside a house showing a very small (relatively) wooden chimney.

Here you can see from the kitchen into the "Stube" or the parlor (Stube is specifically a room with a heating oven, the main living room of the house)
You can see the mass-heater on the right, the blue tiled object.
The green object is of course the stove, this a more modern version of the wood stove.
Above you see the chimney hood, and between the exhaust flue coming out of the heating oven. Often the bottom of the chimney is open.

Then some other pictures from an old house, drawings, that should clarify the arrangement.

We have been talking about planes at another thread. To keep from distracting that thread too far off topic, I'll continue here with my points.

First I need to reiterate a little,

Jay mentioned planing in Asia and the highly developed techniques of Japan. Surely he is correct in asserting there is no one who has done the things the Japanese have doen with planing.

But I wanted to mention a few things about planing in Switzerland, especially Bern.
First I stated that in log traditions and in timber framing where a thick plank infill is used, the timbers are precisely jointed to exacting dimensions and profiles. Planing of timbers is in this case the first part of layout, where the exact dimensions of the timbers will aid in lining up joints.

I also talked about the art forms of taking off heavy shavings with a plane and using them to construct cheese forms, baskets, buckets, etc.

Beyond this, planing is used extensively to profile, decorate, joint, etc. The carpenters shop of the past would have had an extensive collection of planes used to cut the profiles on the edge of timbers, join timber and planks, cut grooves, etc.


Seen here is the tool collection of a well-stocked shop from a century ago. The shear number of planes is astounding. Most of these are moulding planes of various profiles. On the rear wall you can see 4 giant planes which would have been used for making timbers as perfectly straight as possible. these are "Fugeboum" or jointing planes. They take off only the corners. They are meant to operated by 2 mean, and actually cut in both directions.

and here is the shop of a craftsman who works with planer shavings to make baskets, buckets, cheese forms, etc.

Hello everyone again,

Recently I have been looking into the bolster block type of construction.

For those that are unfamiliar with the concept, a bolster or pillow is a block set on top of a post to bear a beam. There are a number of reasons to use a bolster block. It can shorten then span of timbers by supporting them out further away from the post (This is almost universal on the old bridges in the Canton of Bern where bolsters are used to lengthen the allowable span between support piers)
Another reason is to allow simplified joinery in the post connection, especially if two beams must come together at a single level above the post, if one is supported by a bolster the connection is not overly weakened

Most frequently, Bernese carpenters will use a bolster block to simplify the scarf joints needed in roof framing. In log building, bolsters are very commonly used allow the carpenters to make long purlin runs out of a number of short spans -the purlins in this case need only span the distance between 2 posts. This is especially important in the Simmental, where the houses are expanded along their ridge to house a barn under the same roof (inn contrast to the Frutigtal where the barn is placed along the gable beside the house). The use of bolsters allows shorter timbers, which makes more efficient use of the logs.

In log building it is common to place a bolster on top of a post with a stub tenon or a bridle joint, then fix the beam on top with a network of pegs. The scarf in the beams is often merely a butt-joint, or perhaps a tenoned scarf to resist twisting. Sometimes a pegged half lap is used. Complex scarf joints are deemed unnecessary (and this belief is supported by centuries-old examples)

bolsters are also used in the timber framing regions, especially in the regions where timber framing is intermixed with log building. In the north, on the Swiss Plateau, bolsters are far rarer. In this range, where the overall roof structure is a genuine timber frame, the assembly often includes let in braces attaching the bolster and the post.

I like bolsters. It is one of the many examples in the Canton of Bern where carpenters chose to adopt an incredibly simple solution to their problems rather than seeking to solve it with complex joinery and complicated truss assemblies. Timber framing here is full of this concept, and log building has taken this principle the furthest.