Woodworking in Costa Rica

March 22, Wednesday - After another buffet breakfast (fruit, yogurt, granola, scrambled eggs, sausages, pastries and coffee), we "Ubered" to the southwest of our hotel about 3 miles and about 300 feet up to Biesanz Woodworks that we read about in our guidebook.

We arrived in about 12 minutes at what looked like a closed, empty building with heavy iron grill work over everything. However after we paid off our driver, the showroom manager came out, unlocked the door and ushered us in.  Minor, his name, explained that it was best to tour the "ecological garden" and the workshop before looking around in the showroom. 

We went out back which has a variety of trees and bushes surrounding a pond.  The owner is a "planter" of trees and uses mostly trees that have died or been blown down.  Later, we saw that he has a huge inventory of tropical hardwoods.  He came to Costa Rica in 1972 from Detroit.  He lives further up the road on a mountaintop farm.  The showroom manager said that all of his employees, including himself, had worked for him for over 30 years.  We saw four guys at work in the shop.

Around the pond the manager pointed out some trees and flowers.  There was a pair of green herons building a nest in one of the trees and an amiable three-legged dog patrolled the yard and begged for rubs.  The shop was in the far corner of the lot and has a number of open-

 air rooms.  The first room was lumber storage for bowl-turning blanks and the like, equipped with two bandsaws for rough shaping of the blanks.  The next room was full of first turnings that were "drying," some for as many as 20 years. Every product involved years of drying from start to finish to assure stability.

We then passed into the actual work area with drill press driven sanding wheels, lathes and workbenches.  Two guys were sanding, one guy was gluing up six-sided boxes and the last was working on a lathe sanding rings and bracelets.  We got demonstrations of turning an aged, first- turned bowl which showed the change in color of the wood as the outer layer was cut off, and then cutting off a finished bowl from the faceplate base.  The last room was for lumber storage - they had large "stickers" piles of wide one to two-inch thick lumber. 

I don't know if you will be able to see in the photos, but the sanding guys used box fans positioned to get one side to blow the sawdust away from them.  It was a creative way to control dust.  They did use face masks when turning at the lathe though.

We retuned to the showroom and marveled at the many varied designs, the beautiful grain patterns and the silky smooth finishes.  No piece was stained and they prided themselves on not using any toxic compounds, although  they steep the bowls in a tank of rum to season them and to stabilize the wood.  We bought a few small items for gifts.  And I got many more ideas for things to make back in my shop.

We left the showroom after getting some advice on the best route to walk back to our hotel and successfully made it in about a hour.  Most of the roads had verges or narrow walking paths next to a constant parade of cars and trucks.  We stopped at a bakery for drinks and a snack.

After a rest in the hotel, we wandered over to the park in search of birds.  Surprisingly, we spotted several including both varieties of ducks - Muscovy and Black Belly Whistling, a Great Egret, a Lineated Woodpecker, a small greenish colored warbler which was too indistinct to identify, 2 parrots, and a White Winged Dove.

We gathered for our tour group introduction at 6 pm.  The two leaders are young Costa Ricans, Erick and Reimer and the group totals 19 people.  There is a group of 8 people from California who know each other and two other groups of four who are traveling together.  We have one single woman and us.  We had a group dinner after getting the program briefing for tomorrow.