Hand planed panelling

From the mid 1800s construction in Sweden turned from small-scale operations to industrialised businesses; a process that continued well into the 20th century. Before the introduction of circular saws and planing-machines, the panels had to be sawn and planed by hand. Hjo still features a wealth of hand-planed facade panelling, some that are more than 130 years old! No less than 69 buildings with hand-planed panelling have been recorded, of which 33 feature an unusually large amount of well-preserved panelling. The most intricate panel boards were made by way of a process involving ten different steps. The first step was to saw through the tree, and the final step was smoothing out a chosen profile with the help of a special profile plane.