From the tree to the workshop, with nothing delegated: a fully integrated chain in the heart of the Limousin.
We are neither a timber merchant nor an industrial sawmill. We are a workshop that masters the entire chain, from the forest to the roof.
Follow the making of a sweet chestnut shingle from start to finish, from choosing the tree in our woodland to the finished roof. French audio with subtitles.
In Janailhac, in the Haute-Vienne, we manage our own stands of sweet chestnut. We select the tree, fell it at maturity, and work it on the spot. A few hundred metres separate the stump from the workshop.
That proximity changes everything: nothing is lost in transport, traceability is complete, and we only ever cleave sound wood, felled at exactly the right moment.
A straight trunk, free of knots, at least 35 cm in diameter. Only the best trees go to the cleaving bench.
The trunk is cross-cut into 33 cm bolts, the exact length of a shingle. The wood is worked green, when it cleaves most willingly.
Each bolt is quarter-cleft along the grain. The sapwood, which does not last, is removed entirely.
Every shingle is checked one by one before delivery. Nothing leaves the workshop without that final look.
Sweet chestnut cleaves cleanly on the quarter, following its own fibres. It is this cleaving, not sawing, that leaves the surface of the wood intact and gives it its exceptional lifespan.
Each 33 cm bolt yields several shingles, cleft by hand and slightly irregular: the signature of handwork, and the guarantee of wood that has never been forced.
Each shingle is quarter-cleft, then dressed by hand with a drawknife at the shaving bench. A slow, precise gesture that follows the grain of the wood instead of forcing it.
It is also a craft that passes from one generation to the next, in the workshop at Janailhac.
No merchants, no needless transport, no compromise on quality. Sustainable forestry, certifiable under PEFC and Bois de France, and a workshop in control of every step. That is rare, and it is the whole point of working with a manufacture rather than a reseller.
Receive a sample of hand-cleft chestnut, straight from our workshop in Janailhac.
