Auslandspraktikum Schottland

How Austrian students find their way to Russwood!

That is a long story, but to give you a brief summary it is all about asking. During a summer holiday in Scotland on the Isle of Skye I asked for an internship and I went back home with the contact details of Russwood. After my first internship last year, I discussed with Russwood the possibility of writing a diploma thesis with them as a partner company.

This year I took my partner of the diploma thesis with me to Scotland. Therefore, we want to give you some facts about our project. The topic is: Examination of various surface treatment agents of facades for UV resistance.

So, we started with the question were to fit the sample boards, for testing. In the beginning we thought about some different possibilities and planned various test areas to show them to Russwood. In the end we decided to build a strong and simple test rack. After producing the test frame, we needed the samples, for that we built the test rack. According to our specification, we were working with two kinds of wood. These two are thermal treated pine and Siberian larch. To compare the UV resistance, it is necessary to machine the boards to the same size. Not only the kind of wood is part of our diploma project, several types of treatment are also included. For that we compared different surface treatments, such as sawn, planned and brushed boards. Some samples were fixed to the new research and development building of Russwood in Newtonmore to present customers differently treated cladding profiles. For us the time working with Russwood passed very quickly and was a vast experience.

Florian Entleitner, Florian Engelbertz, 5BH