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Anna-Lena got a calmer husband

When Anna-Lena and Thomas Karlsson stopped working as farmers six years ago, a quiet life in front of the television was not an option. Together they rebuilt the barn to a fully equipped joinery workshop.

Making furniture is Anna-Lena’s passion.

Thomas Karlsson is relaxing beside the sawmill and his wife Anna-Lena is pleased with the fact that her husband has become calmer.

Beautiful woodworking, using CAD-program.

Six years ago, the cows left the farm in Kareda, Sweden. This was the beginning of a shared hobby for the husband and wife Thomas and Anna-Lena Karlsson.
“In addition, I got a calmer husband,” says Anna-Lena.

The spouses had more than 40 dairy cows on the farm, but when Anna-Lena contracted rheumatism the cows were sold and Thomas got a job as a carpenter. That a former farmer should park himself in front of the TV on his spare time was nothing to consider. A Logosol Sawmill was purchased.
The next investment was a four-sided planer/molder, Logosol PH260, which he bought together with a friend. The planer/molder became a boost in a double sense. First, it is a versatile machine that can do more than produce moldings and paneling; second, it awakened an interest in wood for Anna-Lena.
“Thomas can keep the sawmill to himself, but the planer/molder is a good machine. If Thomas just mounts the molding knives I can manage the machine myself,” says Anna-Lena.

Without knots

Making furniture is Anna-Lena’s passion, garden furniture of old designs. The first project was some chairs and a sofa sized for children, after that she has made the model two steps bigger to match adults. She chooses the material with the greatest care.
Preferably, it should be foursided and without knots.
One or two knots are hard to avoid, but since Anna-Lena herself selects and planes the lumber she can hide the knots that are inevitable.
The result is furniture of a quality that you cannot buy. Who but a person that owns forest, a sawmill and a planer/molder would come up with the idea of manufacturing garden furniture of highclass molding lumber?
“The forest is the best medicine for stress. The workshop has the same effect on me. Time flies and I can work with something I like in my own pace,” says Anna-Lena.
When the rheumatism starts to set in, days can pass without her being able to do any woodwork. Such times she has something to look forward to when the pain passes off.

Training CAD on damp lumber

Thomas too makes furniture and has also started making windows with the newly purchased vertical milling machine, a Logosol MF30.
He bought it to produce the only thing that a PH260 cannot do – end milling.
’This machine can do a lot more than that. It will take time to learn how to use it to the full,’ says Thomas.
At work he has left the carpentry field and has qualified as a constructor and designer.
The result of this is that the products he makes in the workshop at home are also designed in CAD on the computer. When Fresh Cut is visiting him, Thomas is taking a course in 3D CAD. His course project is a cabin made of fresh lumber.
“It’s a real challenge. It’s important that you don’t build in damp in the walls,” says Thomas.

A hobby without stress

But even though computers and machines are good, Thomas and Anna-Lena thinks that the best thing with the workshop is that they have found a common hobby. They figure things out and work together in the workshop, and they drink coffee sitting in a suite of furniture on the old feeding table. And then we had the thing about a calmer husband.
“When we run the farming business Thomas was always under stress. Now he even has time to sit down and talk,” says Anna-Lena.