Perfect sawing in the circus tent

Per Simon Edström with his sawmill.

Per Simon Edström has the perfect saw house for his Logosol Sawmill: an old circus tent, which also has room for the sawn lumber.

It is never too late to realize your dreams. Ask Per Simon Edström, 78 years old and busy creating the perfect acoustics with the help of 200 spruces and one Logosol Sawmill.

Per Simon Edström has devoted his life to realizing his theatre dreams. He has done the most: Written plays and books, directed, acted, worked with lighting and as a theatre architect. He is mostly known for being the driving force behind the theatre boat Arena, a government-funded region theatre, which berthed at 60 places in the Stockholm and Lake Mälaren archipelagos. This adventure ended in 1985.
”The politicians thought we were too left-winged, so they closed us down,” Per Simon says.

Cognac in the sauna

But instead of retiring, he took the opportunity to realize his own ideas, everything from an experimental theatre at home on his farm, to a wood-heated sauna built of a gigantic cognac barrel.
”The first time we used the sauna there was a delightful scent in it. Later on, the scent disappeared and you needed a bottle of cognac each time to recreate the atmosphere. It became too expensive to use the sauna, Per Simon says jokingly.
His great passion is the theatre on his farm. He compares it to an instrument, which you have to give the correct acoustics, and there also has to be a closeness between the audience and the actors. In order to exploring the possibilities, he built his own theatre called Modellen (the model) with room for an audience of 80 people.
Here he has produced plays in all kinds of theatre forms, and the experiments have proven what Per always has maintained.
”The classical arena theatre is superior,” he says.
The arena is like a circus with the audience around the entire ring. A circus tent lacks the acoustics, and the arenas of today, like the Globe Arena in Stockholm, lack the closeness to the audience. The best would be an arena of wood, like the Drottningholm Theatre.
“The walls will speak if they are built of two inch thick spruce boards,” Per Simon says.
He designed an arena theatre for Ramallah, the Palestinians’ temporary capital on the West Bank. It was never built, but everything needed for realizing the dream was closer at hand, at home on Värmdö.
“50 years ago, my father planted spruces in an enclosed pastureland. To be honest, I did not like that the pastureland disappeared,” says Per Simon, who after a couple of years changed his opinion.
”Instead of thinning, we sold Christmas trees. People came here by car with newly-bought roof racks and axes. They cut down their Christmas trees themselves and paid 25 Swedish kronor each.”  As time went by, the spruces grew tall. Per Simon saw the opportunity to restore the old pastureland and get himself building material for the perfect arena theatre. He bought an extended and completely equipped Logosol Sawmill, which was placed in a circus tent.
”You can’t find a better sawing house. The sawmill and the lumber are protected from wind and weather.”
The theatre manager had no difficulty in learning how to handle the sawmill.  When he was young, he worked as a timber estimator in the forest, and he trained two persons who used the first chainsaws. Nowadays, he also has help when sawing, but he himself takes care of the most important job: sharpening the chains.
“A sharp chain means everything, especially when you are cutting into a spruce with hard knots in it,” Per Simon states.

Officially a barn

Actually, it is not a theatre he is building. The 24 metre (79 ft) long building will primarily be a hay barn for the ewes and lambs on the farm. Today the bales of hay are stored in two old circus wagons.
”But when the barn is empty in the summer, there is nothing stopping you from having a theatre here, so you might as well build it right in the first place,” Per Simon says.
The ’theatre barn’ will also serve as an exhibition room for a travelling waxworks show from the 19th century. It has been exhibited in the Museum of National Antiquities, but today it is stored up. *

Anders is the New Record Holder

Logosol has held the world record for the longest plank for more than ten years. Double records, that is. But now the last record is beaten. In next year’s edition of Guinness Book of World Records the record-holder’s name is Anders Nykvist from Onsala in Sweden.

The record was broken sooner than planned. Due to that, this is one of the few photos that show the event. The press of the world did not make it in time.

With the help of five other sawmill owners and a total of ten Logosol Sawmills, Anders Nykvist succeeded in breaking Logosol’s world record in the event ‘the world’s longest plank’. The new record is 38.9 metres (127.6 ft).

It was Logosol that initiated the event ’longest plank’ in 1995 at Elmia Wood Fair in Jönköping, Sweden. According to the rules, which have been approved by the record book, the plank must be of the dimensions 2x4” all along the plank. The part of the plank that does not come up to the mark is deducted. Logosol’s first world record was a 34.1 m (112 ft) long plank. Two years later, it was time for another go when Logosol’s US office in Mississippi was inaugurated. The earlier record was surpassed by more than one metre (3.3 ft), and up to now the world record has been 35.2 metres (115 ft). 
Since then, no one has been able to break the record. At Logosol it has been speculated if anyone else would be able to succeed. The guess has been that a new record would be set in the US, where there are much taller trees than in Sweden and they have the helicopter lifts needed for lifting the giant log.
What no one expected was that a guy from Onsala in Sweden would break the record after having seen the first record plank hanging in one of Elmia Wood Fair’s exhibition halls in Jönköping.
“When I saw the plank, I decided to beat the record,” Anders Nykvist remembers.
He worked as a carpenter on the East Indiaman Gothenburg, and took part in making the floor timbers, which were sawn with the help of a Big Mill from Logosol.
”I knew how to do it, and a couple of years ago I bought a Logosol Sawmill,” Anders says.
But one Logosol Sawmill is not enough for breaking any world record. And furthermore, you need a tree of extraordinary length. Anders works with felling trees in a residential area, and he knew of some really tall and straight spruces in Tulebo, south of Gothenburg.
”I contacted the land owner, who probably thought I was out of my mind. But he gave me his permission,” Anders says.
Then, he put an ad in the local paper announcing that he wished to get in touch with other Logosol Sawmill owners who were interested in lending him their sawmills to take part in breaking the world record. The newspaper thought the idea was so funny that he was allowed to insert the ad for free. Some twenty Logosol Sawmill owners announced their interest.
When everything was pieced together, Anders contacted the record book, and they were interested in sending out a controller. The intention was that the preparations for the sawing should be made in good time, but when the controller phoned at the beginning of May in 2007, Anders had to skip that plan.
“It was a Friday, and he asked what I had planned to do the day after. He was in Gothenburg and thought that it was about time to saw the world’s longest plank,” Anders says.
He accepted the challenge, and the same evening he went out to fell the record spruce. The sawmill owners were contacted again, and at six o’clock in the morning, on Saturday the 12th of December, there were ten Logosol Sawmills and five sawmill owners at the site in Tulebo. Anders had prepared himself by cutting new aluminium profiles into lengths, which were then used for rebuilding the sawmills. He removed the lifting devices from the sawmills and joined the guide rails together. What was left was a 50 metres (164 ft) long guide rail, which was placed on the road, and then adjusted straight with the help of a string.
The tree was lopped and lugged out in the road with the help of a tractor and an excavator. It was placed on a number of garage jacks beside the guide rail. The preparations took four hours, and ten o’clock in the morning the sawing of the first slab began. The cut was taken deeply in the log so that the first board would come in the centre.
“We cut the slab in one metre (3 ft) long pieces to be able to lift it away,” Anders explains.
In the next stage, the log was lifted up with the garage jacks, and a four inch beam was cut out. The beam was then turned over, resting on the part of the log that was still lying on the garage jacks. After this another slab was cut from this beam, and finally it was time to cut the record plank.
“I wore out two chains before everything was finished towards evening. Since we had dragged the log on the ground, the bark was full of sand and dirt,” Anders says.
The plank was well over 39 metres (128 ft), but on the last part of it the measurement was not correct. The accepted part of the plank measured 38.9 metres (127.6 ft), which will be the new world record that Guinness book of records presents in the edition of 2008. And the record holder is Anders Nykvist.*