V3 · Sonnet

San valley · Ulanów · raftsmen's trade

Floating timber down the San

Before a raft set off into the current, someone had to bind it. Choose a part of the diagram to see the material, the task and the source of the description.

Diagram of a raftsman's raft section (tafla) seen from above Six logs lie along the current, with their thinner ends towards the bottom of the drawing. Two cross-bars (powązki) run across them, and twelve withies (wici) bind the points where they cross. At the lower, front end of the raft section stands the dryl, or steering oar. On the right, in the water below the lower end of the raft section, floats the retman's dugout, because according to the description it travels ahead of the raft. An illustrative drawing, not to scale, not a photograph. 1 2 3 4 5
Illustrative diagram, not a photograph. A view from above of a raft section assembled at a binduga (riverside raft-building yard); the current runs down the drawing and the river is at the right-hand edge. The dryl stands at the lower (front) end of the raft section, and the retman's dugout is drawn below it because it travels ahead of the raft. The logs and cross-bars are shown in simplified form, not to scale. Our own drawing (V3 · Sonnet), with no photograph and no statement from a practitioner. What is what →

Parts of the diagram and their documentation

3 · Withies and lashings — join the cross-bars to the logs

1Load-bearing logs longitudinal logs

Carrier and working surface: loose logs become a single plane on which the crew works.

Material
Debarked logs laid parallel, with the thinner end pointing downstream.
Task
Sorting the logs at the binduga and preparing them for the cross-bars.
Documentation
UNESCO: Timber rafting (2022)To check in the source: debarking, the direction in which the logs lie, cutting of grooves. Description carried over from V2.

2Cross-bars (powązki) transverse bars

They clamp the logs together crosswise and stop them drifting apart under the pressure of the water.

Material
Poles or hewn rods laid across the load-bearing logs.
Task
Pressing them against the logs and binding them with withies; V2 says this was done without iron nails.
Documentation
UNESCO: Timber rafting (2022)To check in the source: the absence of nails and the number of cross-bars. The two cross-bars in the drawing are a conventional simplification.

3Withies and lashings wić (withy)

They join the cross-bars to the logs and let the raft section flex over irregularities in the current.

Material
Twisted young shoots; V2 names willow, spruce or hazel.
Task
Twisting the withies, threading them under the cross-bars and fixing them with wooden pegs (V2 description).
Documentation
NID: Flisackie tradycje w Ulanowie [Raftsmen's traditions in Ulanów]To check in the source: the species of shoot, the pegs, the way the withies were woven. The loops in the drawing are a sign, not a reconstruction of the weave.

4Dryl (raft steering oar) dryga

It guides the raft section in the current and pushes it away from shoals and banks.

Material
A long steering oar at the front or the back of the raft (V2 gives both variants).
Task
Keeping the raft section in the main current and pushing it away from shoals and banks.
Documentation
Lasy Państwowe: Flisak na liście [Raftsman on the list]To check in the source: the name (dryl, dryga), where it was mounted and the number of oars. The drawing conventionally shows one at the front, at the lower end of the raft section (downstream).

5Retman's dugout retman and retmańczyk

Scouting ahead of the rafts. This is a role of knowledge and organisation, not a part of the structure.

Material
A light boat travelling ahead of the rafts.
Task
Sounding the depth, marking dangerous places, indicating stopping places and assigning watches.
Documentation
Lasy Państwowe: Flisak na liście [Raftsman on the list]To check in the source: the size and number of dugouts. The drawing does not show how they were built; the dugout is drawn below the lower end of the raft section because it travels ahead of it.

What is missing here: photographs of hands at work and a statement from a practitioner. They would need the consent of the people involved and a rights check, so a labelled diagram stands in their place.

Five stages

From log to buyer

The chapters differ in length because different amounts are known. The buttons beside a chapter highlight the matching part of the diagram at the top.

  1. Material

    From the forest to the river

    Building a raft began before launching: with choosing the timber and bringing the logs to the river. UNESCO lists these tasks as part of the craft that is passed on. The river itself did not replace the preparation of the raw material.

    Source: UNESCO

  2. Binding

    The raft section takes shape at the binduga

    The binduga was a place where timber was prepared for floating. After the Second World War, the raftsmen of Ulanów assembled rafts at bindugi along the San. UNESCO's general description points to the essential task: joining logs into a raft. Loose raw material became a structure that a crew could steer together.

    The drawing at the top breaks this task into three layers: the logs (1), the cross-bars lying across them (2) and the withies enclosing the points where they cross (3). This is an order for learning, not building instructions. The number of cross-bars, the kinds of knots and the species of shoots have to be taken from the cited sources; this version of the page did not check them.

    Loose timber, a raft section and a present-day demonstration are three different things. Here we describe raft sections bound from logs. Loose floating of single logs is not described here, and today's demonstration has a separate layer in the section What is what.

    Sources: Lasy Państwowe (State Forests), UNESCO

  3. Organisation

    The retman reads the river

    The retman and the retmańczyk oversaw the floating. According to the State Forests (Lasy Państwowe), they travelled ahead of the rafts in dugouts, marked dangerous places, indicated stopping places and assigned watches. This is knowledge of the river and organisation of the crew, not an element of the structure.

    Source: Lasy Państwowe (State Forests)

  4. Floating

    The current carries, people choose

    The current did part of the transport work, but choosing the route and organising the crew remained the task of the people. The material gives no speeds, journey times or list of former landing places, so we do not give them.

  5. Delivery

    To the sawmill, not always to the sea

    Not every flis (timber-rafting trip) was bound for the Baltic. Post-war rafts from the San delivered timber to sawmills in Przemyśl, Leżajsk and Nisko. These are confirmed examples of buyers, not a list of all landing places. The economic aim was specific: to move raw material from forest areas to the place where it was processed.

    Source: Lasy Państwowe (State Forests) · dated records

Footnote to the model

Why logs float

A body floats when its average density is lower than that of water. This is a model of ideal cylinders at rest: it does not say whether a real raft section was safe or how much it could carry.

Cross-section of a cylinder in water (model) The circle shows the cross-section of one log; the horizontal line is the water surface. Above the line is air, below it water, and at the very bottom a grey band of riverbed. The part of the circle below the line is submerged. The position of the circle changes with the density of the material, the number of logs and the load.
A model, not a photograph. A cross-section of one cylinder with an equivalent density: its logs plus an evenly distributed cargo. The area of the circle below the waterline is the share of buoyancy that the system uses. In the drawing, from the top: air, water (blue band below the line), riverbed (grey band at the bottom).

Underwater: 65.0% of the cross-section: floats

Without JavaScript, the default state of the model is shown (logs 650 kg/m³, 12 pcs, no cargo).

Model parameters

Conventional values, not a measurement of timber. Water: 1000 kg/m³ (an assumption, not a measurement of the river).

12 pcs

With no cargo all logs sit equally deep: the number of logs then changes only the volume, mass and buoyancy. The waterline moves only once there is cargo.

0 kg

Fixed assumptions: diameter 0.35 m, length 10 m. The cargo is spread evenly over all the logs.

Volume of logs
11.55 m³
Mass of logs
7.50 t
Max. buoyancy
11.55 t
Buoyancy reserve
4041 kg
Floats Floats in the model: 65.0% of the volume is underwater, buoyancy reserve 4041 kg at rest.

What the model leaves out: waves, current, transverse stability, water absorption by the wood and the strength of the lashings. It is not a safety standard or an assessment of past timber floating.

Layers of knowledge

What is what

Today's tradition, a record of past timber floating and our diagram are three different kinds of knowledge. We do not place them on a common timeline or map, because we have no verified data for that.

Today

Living tradition and demonstration

  • 2022Timber rafting in six countries, Poland among them, was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. UNESCO
  • Ulanów lies where the Tanew flows into the San. The Raftsmen's Brotherhood of St Barbara (Bractwo Flisackie pw. św. Barbary) passes skills on to later generations; the NID (National Heritage Board of Poland) also lists dialect, songs and rituals. NID
  • A photograph of a raft in Ulanów (2013, Klotbas, CC BY-SA 3.0) is a present-day view of the tradition, not an archive of commercial timber floating. It is not embedded in the page, only linked. File on Wikimedia Commons · licence
Record

What the sources say about past timber floating

  • 1819The Austrian authorities ordered the upper San to be cleared of stones and boulders that obstructed floating. Lasy Państwowe
  • 1939According to the town office, the last commercial floating of timber from Ulanów to Gdańsk took place in the summer. Ulanów
  • After the Second World War, no exact dateTransport of timber along the San to sawmills in Przemyśl, Leżajsk and Nisko. There is no date, so we do not place it between the years above. Lasy Państwowe
Model

Our diagram and calculations

  • The drawing of the binding is our own illustrative diagram. It is neither a photograph nor a reconstruction of a specific raft section.
  • The cross-section in the buoyancy part is a model of an ideal cylinder at rest, not a raft and not a safety assessment.
  • We do not give: locations of bindugi and landing places, routes, speeds or journey times. Former locations would need a separate archival search.

Read at the source

Sources and verification status

The links were carried over from the previous version of the page. In this version they have not been reopened or rechecked, so treat the descriptions as something to confirm in the source text.

  1. Lasy Państwowe: Flisak na liście [Raftsman on the list]The San, bindugi, the retman and post-war transport to sawmills in Przemyśl, Leżajsk and Nisko.
  2. UNESCO: Timber raftingBuilding rafts, joining logs and the 2022 inscription on the Representative List.
  3. NID: Flisackie tradycje w Ulanowie [Raftsmen's traditions in Ulanów]The role of Ulanów, the Brotherhood of St Barbara and the present-day passing on of raftsmen's knowledge.
  4. Ulanów: Tradycje flisackie [Ulanów: Raftsmen's traditions]The history of the local craft, rafting trips along the Vistula route and the last floating in 1939.
  5. Wikimedia Commons: Tradycyjna tratwa flisacka [A traditional raft]A present-day photograph (Ulanów, 2013), by Klotbas, CC BY-SA 3.0. Link only.

What changed compared with V2

  • The calculator with five parameters has shrunk to a footnote on buoyancy. The diameter and length of the cylinders are fixed assumptions (they affect the result only through volume, that is, together with the cargo), and instead of bare numbers there is a cross-section with a waterline.
  • The local notes register has been removed: it was not needed to understand the topic. The page stores nothing in the browser.
  • The switches for floating points and the five stages have been replaced with continuous text and dated records. The content is the same, without clicking.
  • The photograph from Commons is no longer embedded; the link remains.

Atlas of Discoveries · version V3 of the project “Floating timber down the San”. The page works without external resources; links to sources open separately. The integrator checks that the catalogue, V1 and V2 target pages exist.