Hans Hundegger grew up in the village of Hawangen, Germany, working in his father’s sawmill, which fortunately was far enough removed from war-torn Munich to provide a fertile learning environment. While his brother ran operations, Hans constantly improved the machines that were processing logs and cutting them into timbers as large as 10”x12”x30’ and weighing up to 500 lbs. Just moving these logs and timbers through the sawmill required as much expertise as sawing them.
Hans furthered his prospects by studying mechanical engineering and starting his own business in a barn on his family’s property in 1978, developing sawmill equipment. When a nearby sawmiller, Jakob Maier, visited, he urged him, “Hans, carpenters’ way of working hasn’t changed since the days of St. Joseph. You have to do something about it.” Hans then set about building his first joinery machine. To appreciate the magnitude of that task, it is essential to understand the prevalence and complexity of exposed timber construction in Europe.
Fundamental to timber framing practice, and to Hans’ life’s work, is the art of joinery, which refers to the intricate shaping of the ends of members so that they may be connected securely, and nearly invisibly. While mortise and tenon joints are commonly used worldwide in wood furniture construction, this type of intricate joinery is seldom applied to stick-framed structures in the U.S. However, it is increasingly found in European structures.
Fashioning three-dimensional shapes, like the ends of a mortise and tenon connection, cannot be accomplished with a single tool. However, these connections could be formed by moving the timber through separate stages, each with the appropriate tool, which was the basis for the design of Hans’ first joinery machine, the P8, which he introduced in 1985. The P8 distinguished itself by being the first computer-controlled joinery machine, and one of the first to apply processes without turning or re-orienting the piece.
Hans continually upgraded his equipment, adding the ability to download CAD files in the late 1980s, almost coincidentally with Jerry Koskovich in the U.S., who was also innovating from a small village, that of Byron, MN, population 2700. However, Koskovich’s Omni saw and those from other U.S. vendors only cut wood, while Hans’ could also drill, mill, rout, and shape wood.
In the early 1990s, Hans incorporated ground-breaking, two-handed technology in the development of his K2 joinery machine. The K2 has two separate transport and gripping mechanisms that enable accurate machining of log home profiles, T-sections, and multiple stacks of lumber. And multiple processes can be applied at a single workstation by means of a tool changer with a magazine that can hold 17 different tools, a quantum leap in productivity that dramatically reduced the footprint of the K2 over the P8.
In 1995, Hans’ success in Europe came to the attention of Kip Apostol, a timber framer in Utah, who purchased a K1 joinery machine and awakened Hans to his opportunities in the U.S. (for more information, see Sixty Years of Machines, Part XXII: Linear Saw Convergence). Based on guidance from Kip and his project manager, Steve Shrader, Hans began development of the SC-1, a more compact and faster saw geared to the component industry.
In 1999, Hans took his next-generation K2 joinery machine to the most prestigious exhibition in the world, the LIGNA woodworking show in Germany. There, despite the small size of his exhibit, Hans booked a record number of orders and established his company as a major force in automation in the woodworking industry. In 2003, Hans achieved similar success exhibiting his new SC-1 at the Building Component Manufacturers Conference (BCMC), paving the way for his entry into the U.S. component industry. What differentiated the SC-1 from early U.S. linear saws was its capability to process a stack of four boards.
When Hans visited the U.S., he couldn’t understand why most plants used component saws, because he had long proven the superiority of the lineal saw in Europe. Now, after 30 years and over a thousand linear saws being installed in the U.S., his skepticism has been validated. But the vast majority of U.S. linear saws are not his, despite Hans’ domination of all markets outside the U.S. Yet, as recently demonstrated, Hundegger’s saws have been just an entrée to the material handling capabilities he began to advance 40 years ago (see The Last Word: Material Handling, Saw to Table).
In the early 2000s, Hans built on his trade show successes by launching a faster and more robust joinery saw, the K3, by shipping his 100th SC-1, and by launching his foray into material handling with his “pick and feed” and “pick and place” transport systems. …For more on this story, read its continuation in the July 2025 issue of The CM Advertiser — The Last Word: Discovering Excellence in Germany.
