Matthias Schiestl's workshop is located less than 50 meters from the baroque church of the former Benedictine monastery in Vornbach am Inn near Passau. Until the monastery was secularized in 1803, the building complex served as a farmyard and as a storage facility for beets and potatoes, which the farmers had to give to the monastery as a tithe. This was followed by purely agricultural use. In 1952, Matthias Schiestl's grandparents, who had immigrated from Bohemia, acquired half of the farm. The land is now leased, and the heiress, Matthias Schiestl's cousin, is very happy to have also found a tenant for the building.

Workshop, Farmyard, and Airy Timber Store

Upon entering the more than 2000 m² courtyard, the workshop is located in the left wing of the building behind his uncle's house. Opposite is an open building where more than one hundred cubic meters of sawn timber are stacked airily and neatly as boules. A stack of oak boards is waiting under the roof overhang in front of the workshop to be transported to the timber merchant's drying kiln. In the 450 m² workshop, which is laid with oak planks, Matthias Schiestl and his apprentice Zacharias Zanella are dressing 3.5 m long and 50 mm thick oak planks under a Romanesque groin vault. Two weeks earlier, the two had cut the boules on the sliding table saw. In the meantime, the wood has been able to relax and acclimatize.

The master joiner and civil engineer Matthias Schiestl works exclusively with solid wood. Not a single engineered wood panel is to be found in the entire workshop. In addition to running the joinery, Schiestl builds metal-free solid wood beds, which he sells online with the help of Steinhaus Handels GmbH, also based in Vornbach. He employs two journeymen, one apprentice, and two temporary workers. He covers one-third of his wood requirements with logs that he buys from local farmers and sometimes even fells himself in the forest. Once a year, Schiestl has a mobile sawmill come to the farmyard. Three weeks ago, he milled 30 m³ of beech, oak, and ash and stacked it for air-drying. After two to three years, it is dry enough for him to take it to his timber merchant's drying kiln.

Joinery Takes Time

Working with solid wood requires patience and long-term planning. Schiestl already knows what he has to do until spring 2023 and he makes sure to always have good, dried wood available in good time. To do this, he regularly coordinates with his timber merchant. The joiner also takes the necessary time during production. Schiestl primarily does furniture making and interior finishing for private and commercial customers in the local area. The online business with the beds ensures a basic workload and prevents downtime.

After completing his joinery apprenticeship in 2008, Matthias Schiestl, born in 1990, went on to get his advanced technical college certificate and a degree in civil engineering in Deggendorf, worked in civil engineering, and then attended master craftsman school. In 2017, he founded his joinery and moved into the current workshop in 2019.

An Evolved Machine Park

Matthias Schiestl has geared his machine park towards solid wood processing. Even as a student, he maintained a small workshop for his side business, which was initially equipped with a few small machines inherited from his grandfather. Gradually, he bought more semi-professional machines of the Hammer brand from Felder. With the founding of the full-time business, the Hammer machines made way for larger and professional ones from Format4 and Felder. When he moved into the farmhouse, the Creator through-feed CNC machine was added. For the series production of the metal-free beds, the master joiner also bought a used four-sided planer from Gubisch.

Efficient Solid Wood Processing

Matthias Schiestl: »My customers enthusiastically embrace the focus on solid wood. I have everything I need for an efficient operation here. That includes the gorgeous building, but also the material supply via the large farmyard, the covered storage area, and the tractor. The efficient machines, with features like the spiral cutterblock, sanding unit, or precision sliding table, produce a quality that hardly needs any reworking.«