Woodworking power tools: let the sunshine in!

It’s still early in the morning, but Adam Detre no longer feels like sleeping. Today is a special day: Midsummer’s Eve, “Juhannusaatto,” is here, and in Finland this means starting to celebrate the longest day of the year. With his coffee mug in hand, he steps out the door of his house. To the left, behind the woodpile in the garden, a small family of deer eyes him curiously. Adam walks through the conifer-scented forest towards the nearby lake. “Midsummer is important in Finland. It marks the peak of summer, when everything feels alive. It doesn’t really get totally dark all night,” Adam says. On this day, people typically gather with friends in front of a bonfire to celebrate the light and warmth of summer together.

However, Adam is excited today for another reason. Right on the lakeshore, within sight of the small wooden village sauna, stands his new sculpture — Sun Lens. In the evening, he will show it to some friends for the first time. “I’m a little nervous,” the 40-year-old admits, “I’ve been working on this piece for a long time. So, naturally, I also want people to like it.”

Adam almost exclusively uses wood for his sculptures: “Wood is sturdy and at the same time soft enough to be formed into any shape. You can carve it roughly or delicately and then polish it to a fine finish. I enjoy looking for patterns or movement in nature and then recreating them.” His style: abstract, minimalist, with natural forms that accentuate light and shadow.

Light — more precisely, that of the midsummer sun — is also the main focus of his new work: “That huge ball of flame up in the sky gives us life. It lights our way and provides us with warmth. To me, there’s a truly magical quality about it. I always wanted to create a sculpture that focuses the power of sunlight in a unique place at a specific time.”

That’s why Adam created the Sun Lens. “It faces 37 degrees northeast. That’s precisely where the sun rises above the trees after Midsummer’s Eve,” he explains. “I want people to gaze through the Sun Lens” and feel hopeful and positive again after the dark Finnish winter, to welcome the sun into their lives and recharge their emotional batteries.”

Charging the batteries — that’s one thing Adam didn’t need to do that often while working on the Sun Lens because he used the powerful 18-volt Biturbo Brushless cordless tools from the Bosch Professional Series. He started off by making lots of sketches and models in his small workshop shed: “I had to calculate how to create a polygon from straight pieces of wood. For this, I sawed the beams into individual trapezoids. To achieve the desired diameter of about two meters, I had to make a total of 72 trapezoids — 24 per layer — with a miter angle of 7.5 degrees (total angle of 15 degrees) to get to 360 degrees.”

Adam opted for a wood width of 15 cm to ensure that the final ring would be sufficiently sturdy. He decided to make three identical polygons and then glue them together in layers. “Laminating the 3 layers makes the final product very robust. I made the rings in three equal sections so that they were light enough for two people to easily carry and install at the exhibition site. Often the challenge is not what I will make, but how.”

To create the three polygons, Adam had to saw a total of 72 identical trapezoids — 24 polygons for each layer. For this type of work, he always relies on the Bosch GCM 18V-305 GDC Professional cordless miter saw. “The power of this saw is truly breathtaking — it enables me to make consistent, replicable cuts very quickly and efficiently. I was able to cut out all 72 trapezoids with less than two battery charges.”

No wonder: The Biturbo saw is optimized for maximum performance with ProCore 18V batteries. The power class thus achieved was previously only possible with 2000-watt corded tools offering the highest cutting performance in its class with up to 70 percent more cuts per battery charge.

Adam is particularly pleased that even the larger machines such as the GCM 18V-305 GDC Professional miter saw now run on battery power: “My workshop is small. Long wooden beams like the ones I used for this project do not fit in there. It also gets hot and stuffy inside in the summer, so I can choose to work outside, in front of the shed instead. The saw is quite mobile despite its size. This tool offers me the highest level of power, precision, and flexibility in all respects.”

In the meantime, it has become evening before the longest day of the year. At the fire pit next to the old wooden sauna, within sight of the Sun Lens, Adam has prepared a barbecue. His friends have arrived and are chatting with one other; spirits are high. Together they will hold out until the early morning to be the first to see the rays of the rising sun shining through the wooden sculpture. Adam’s tension was unfounded: Everyone is absolutely taken by his work of art. And that is why he is already beaming like the sun in the sky.