About steinert

 

Nowadays "DRECHSELZENTRUM ERZGEBIRGE - steinert®" is Germanies most important supplier of machinery, tools and accessories for woodturner, woodcarver and woodworker. We can look back to a three generations and over 80 years of woodturning tradition in the Steinert family and more than 200 years of woodturning experience in our region.
 
The Company Name
"DRECHSELZENTRUM ERZGEBIRGE" simply means "Woodturning Centre Erzgebirge". The "Erzgebirge" (Ore Mountains) are a very traditional woodturning area in the East of Germany (Saxony), about 70 km South-West from the city of Dresden, close the Czech border.
"steinert®" of course is the family name of our family run business. "steinert®" also is a registered trademark since the year 2000.

steinert® Showroom

 

The Erzgebirge region and woodturning have coincided for over 200 years.  After the ore recourses (silver, copper, tin etc.) came to a point when mining was not profitable anymore, the Erzgebirge region and the people living there had to look for new sources of income.  The mountainous area was still rich in forest (mainly spruce) after 500 years of mining, making wooden toys became the new source of income for the families in this region.  Woodturning became more and more popular in those days because woodturning made it much more efficient to manufacture toys. Over the centuries the Erzgebirge became one of the most important regions that produced affordable wooden toys - delivering all over Europe.  Today, the Erzgebirge is mainly known for Christmas related wooden statuettes, such as historical figures like Smoking Man, Nut Cracker, Angels and Miners and things like Candle Arches, Pyramids and others - most made on the lathe. There is still a wide range of large and small manufacturers creating and turning traditional and modern wooden art here.  This specialty and the beautiful landscape of the Erzgebirge attract thousands of visitors every year during all four seasons.
The city of Olbernhau, where our company is located, has been the town where most of the tool smith workshops, machine manufacturers, and other suppliers were working in the past two centuries and are still today.

Town Centre of Olbernhau

 

In the early 1930's Hellmut Steinert started a woodturning business in the location where the Steinert business still is located today.  During the 1930's in its best times there were 10 people working in the business, most of them woodturners, manufacturing household goods such as egg cups, plates, bowls, tea cups, wooden toys and much more.  Later, the former communist regime of the Eastern part of Germany disseized  Hellmut Steinert, however he was still managing the company until the late 1980's.
Rolf Steinert, Hellmut's son, also spent his life doing woodturning related activities and still does.  After a woodturner and cabinet maker apprenticeship and a couple of years practice he became a teacher for woodturning and wood designing in a design and art school in the Erzgebirge.  In the early 1970's Rolf Steinert founded the trademark "expertic" representing hundreds of small arts & crafts companies of the region worldwide.  During the 70's and 80's Rolf Steinert wrote two books about woodturning. The first book is still used today as technical book for the apprenticeship in the woodturning school of Seiffen.
In 1990 Rolf Steinert and his wife Christiane Steinert started their woodturning supply business just a few weeks after the German reunion.  Within the coming years both established the business as one of the most important woodturning and woodcarving suppliers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
In 2008 the Steinert's two sons, Roland and Martin, took over the business their parents had founded.  Rolf and Christiane Steinert still work in the company and bring their many years of experience into the family business.

 

Today steinert® is the most important supplier for high quality machinery, tools, chucks, accessories etc. in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and abroad. In an over 1,000 square meter newly built showroom steinert® offers over 4,000 products from all over the world and from the region.  Under the trademark steinert® some products are offered from local manufacturers.  The most well-known among these products are the range of steinert® lathes - heavy duty cast iron lathes at the top end of the market manufactured by WEMA GmbH Olbernhau.  Other steinert® products are handmade woodturning tools from a local blacksmith in a traditional design used in the Erzgebirge for generations, special finishing oils and waxes because the existing products on the market could not completely fulfill our standards, and even a software by steinert® called CONTUR to design woodturning objects on the PC.

Heavy Duty Woodturning Lathe steinert® maximo

 

Online shop: www.drechslershop.de/

Informational website 1: www.drechselzentrum.de/

Informational website 2: www.steinert.eu/

steinert® CONTUR: www.steinert-contur.de/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/Drechselzentrum

Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/SteinertDrechseln