A long day on the bus

22 May

First stop Notturno Inlaid Wood Factory. A guy gave a talk about how his factory does traditional inlaid wood.  Wood is cut into 1/8 inch thick boards and left to dry for 5 years.  Wood used:  mahogany, olive, lemon, orange, umbrella pine and oak.  The wood is then cut again after curing into very thin shirt cardboard for laminate.  Then between 12 to 24 sheets are stacked and brad nailed together.  Next the stencil is put on top and then very careful jigsaw cutting occurs to cut the wood pattern out.  There's 50% waste in every stencil, put this is part of the traditional process.  After the cutting, the pieces are put back together in a jigsaw piece process.  The framework has masking tape applied so the pieces stay put once the puzzle is put back together.  Once the laminate is re-constructed, the laminate is fish glued to the backing board and left under a great amount of pressure for two days.  Then the piece is finished with high grit sanding to remove any paper and masking tape prior to finishing, either with 9 coats of polyurethane or buffing for finishing.  After the talk, we went into the shopping showroom.  Because the process on any piece takes at a minimum of two months to finish, not counting wood curing time at the start, pieces were somewhat pricey. There were a couple of interesting pieces, but we decided that if we were to buy something expensive, we'd prefer to buy American.

After we left the wood factory, we spent well over an hour in Italian traffic trying to get to Naples.  They had closed 2 tunnels so we had to crawl through the local small laned towns.  The tunnels are being worked on due to age and getting ready for the serious summer traffic.  We made 3 stops enroute to Orvieto and finally arrived at 1530.  The town is a fortress town, so you have to take several escalators (for the tourists) or stairs up the hill side to get inside the city walls.  The stone that most of the buildings are made out of is tofa, and has lasted for centuries, looks like a cross between red lava stone and light brown brick.

Once our suitcases show up, Roger and I are headed out for a stroll after sitting on the bus for so long.  I'll try to post some pictures later.  There's a 1300 Duomo in the town, which is considered a holy site.  Our guide really didn't do a good job explaining why it's holy but I might learn more from our visit.