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Gewerbe Academie Rottweil is a training facility operated and financed by the craft Guilds of the appropriate trades. This academie provides training in other trades besides timber carpentry, especially notable of which is the baking section, which has provided us with hot pastries and beautiful smiles.

In school we are trying to duplicate the traditional methods of compound roof layout that date back to the buildings in the earliest days of this town, and most of Europe. Traditional layout uses no calculator, or computer, and can be accomplished entirely without modern mechanical aids; it all builds upon drawing in plan and elevation, and requires only a straight edge and a story stick.

We have been struggling to duplicate this effort that the Masters candidates spend considerable time on. Our goal is to jam it all into three days of intense study, lead by Zimmermeister Phillipo Daube, and with an assist in translation and concept from Oliver Amandi of Dietrich's AG.

We did get to visit the Masters candidates, and view their struggles with similar models in a well-equipped and brightly lit shop down the hall. They have been coming over to our side, ostensibly to admire our progress, but it may actually have more to do with the pastries.

Now there is great enthusiasm on this end (on the part of both the Guild members and the Academie members) to put this show on the road, and bring some of our favorite Zimmermen to Montebello to run you all through these exercises in a pre-conference workshop format. -- Joel McCarty.

Text by Joel McCarty; Photos by Joel McCarty and Al Wallace
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