A carpenters appreciation for KCD2's joinery

[tequilatibbs]

The furniture and joinery in KCD2 is unmatched in its accuracy, detail, variation and placement. And this post is a token of my appreciation to Warhorse studio.

First, credentials: I am a cabinet/ furniture maker that makes a lot of work with solid wood using traditional techniques/ joinery (this is very rare these days).
I have worked on restoration projects in churches and historic manor houses fixing chairs/ tables/ doors/ panelled walls.
I have taught joinery using traditional hand tools.
I design and make my own furniture (tables/ chairs/ framed and panelled cabinets).

However, i am not a historian. I cant be sure if certain pieces were around in 1403 bohemia but I can tell you if the furniture is made correctly and what is expensive and time consuming versus cheap and functional.

KCD2 must have the most sophisticated and accurate joinery in any computer game.
But to appreciate that we must know a few things essential to solid wood (as opposed to man made boards: mdf; chipboard; plywood).
These are:
1) solid wood is strongest in the long grain, to take advantage of the strength of rhe fibres. So from the base of the tree’s trunk to the top for example.
2) solid wood is constantly adjusting to the environments humidity. More humid and the wood expands, less humid and it contracts. It contracts/ expands most across the radius of the tree (imagine the trunk swelling) and least from top to bottom. The way the tree is sawn can minimise this to a degree (quarter sawn versus flatsawn) but it is through correct joinery that it is managed.

The history of furniture/ joinery (up until the introduction of man made boards in around ww2) is exploiting the strength of wood along the grain and accomodating its unrelenting movement (expansion/ contraction) with changing environmental conditions (humidity).

Therefore, joinery must follow certain rules if it is to last:

1). Take advantage of the fibres strength across its length with jointing such as the mortise and tenon (a long-grain male piece (tenon) fitting into a hole (mortise).
2). Do not fix (so it cannot move) a wide component that will expand/ contract a lot with another that wont. For example you wouldnt pin a piece at the ends going across the width of a table because the table would split as it was forced to shrink in dry conditions.
3). Allow air to circulate if it gets wet by design (say in an attic) to stop rot.

This results in either work whose grain all goes in same direction and so can expand and contract at the same time (like a dovetailed box) or framed and panelled work in which the panel (that wants to move a lot) floats in grooves in the frame (which moves very little) like the panels in a panelled door.
Alternatively you can fix the cross grained part to a long grained part in the middle with say a metal pin, allowing it to shrink and wxpanded from either side like a ledged and braced barn door. This however is more likely to lead to cupping of the boards which a frame and panel prevents.

Anyway i could keep going but i will stop there. Point is there are rules which must be followed for durability.

HOW IS THIS REPRESENTED IN KCD2?

Simply put, this is represented with extroadinary accuracy in KCD2. At doubtless the cost of many hours researching and modelling in game.

Not only is there NEVER any examples of wood grain being fixed incorrectly but there is an utterly astounding variation of examples of it being done correctly. Every example.

Not only is there a vast difference in examples of pieces but also in how these pieces are jointed together. I have seen so far:
Round tenons in stools/ chairs and other “stick” furniture.
Halvings
Bridel joints
Through Tenons
Wedged tenons
Draw-bore tenons
Scribed moldings
Metal Braced joints
Ledged and braced doors
Finger joints for boxes
Rope lashings
Scarfed joints to increase the length of beams.

All these joints fit the quality and purpose of the work they are made for. Fine work like walnut framed panels and refectory tables with wedged through tenons in the town hall or something much simpler for an alehouse table (but that still works!).

And all these pieces fit their setting! You will not see something expensive on the streets!

In simple abodes you have simple windows, in a merchants abode you have proper framed windows where even the mouldings are properly scribed!- As opposed to mitred.

To me this is just mind boggling and a joy to behold because everyhting makes sense, everything is at practically study level accuracy. And even if you dont know the difference it must subconciously have an impact on the player.

You can see carpenters working with tensioned saws and their planks of wood in piles with sticks seperating them so that the air can circulate evenly and not distort the wood.

Walking around Kuttenberg and the villlages i feel like i am learning something about the time! And because i know that the accuracy of the joinery is so stringent it allows me to assume the accuracy of everything else follows. So when i look at a building and how its made i think “i wonder why it was made that way and put there” and i can learn from it because each building, each asset in the game tells a story that can be deduced by the inqusitive and absorbed by the passer by.

I assume they had a furniture historian on the team and they modelled directly from real examples, but they never got lazy.

Thank you war horse studios for this incredible world experience - for an immersion nerd it is a joy to walk around.
I dont think everything is perfect about the game but it is still an incredible and unique experience which i love.

I am really looking forward to the third dlc which i hope opens up the churches! And hardcore mode.

Thanks again

[Dali]

Thank you for posting it and i find your perspective really interesting!

as far as i know they worked with historian(s?) and the world in the game beeing believable historic is also my perspective (only from my hobby perspective and knowledge, and as someone interested about the middle ages, not as someone who really learned about it)

so much about the daily and small life we simply do not know in all details but if what we see seems to be believable as something that makes sense in the setting and age and that it was not done simply in a video game but like it could be done like this IRL - thats really impressive :)

i also really enjoy the world and especially the architecture and the differences in the different buildings (as you mentioned - poorer or more well off...) in my game i only arrived in kuttenberg a few in game hours ago and started to simply discover the city and not focusing on getting the story on - very enjoyable. (but i am sure it will be also enjoyable when i decide to dive right back to the quests and story ^^)

[Patpat]

Interesting, thx !

[Humpenstilzchen]

I also love the attention to detail in this game. Very immersive.

[tequilatibbs]

I'm pleased others find it interesting!

If you look at the market tables in Kuttenberg you can see they are a flat surface made of planks pinned to rails underneath and then resting on two trestles. But also there is a bodged supporting beam in the middle to stop the table bowing under the weight! So the devs have even considered use case! = the merchant had to modify his trestle table through experience.

Also the trestles for carpenters shaving off the bark of a tree are much more heavy duty than the merchants market tables :)

[theo]

Yes this game as well as the first one has so much attention to detail in its every aspect