Page 15 - "Contro: Across-the-grain"

"'You are harder than marble sawed al contro' we say in Tuscany when a child doesn't want to understand or really cannot understand. The contro cuts across the natural bedding perpendicularly. To better understand, let's take a wood board: if it is true that bedding is vertical like the trunk which it coms from, the contro (in our jargon, 'contro in testa') is the section perpendicular to the trunk. We cannot speak of bedding plane for a Board, because it's grain has a circular movement. Laminated wood has a parallel bedding, as a turning lathe unrolls the trunk like a sheet of paper. The contro is not suitable for working, but it is excellent for hammering and splitting a block into layers".