Thanks all. Most of my trouble is obvious that the weight of these smaller logs are not massive enough to hold their postion on their own. I guess I just have to spend a lot of extra setup time shimming and bracing the supports and log to ensure rigidity. Hard to have the right conditions when trying to hew right where you felled it on the forest floor- never really level, and difficult to trench down the supports when the ground is frozen. I do use the lee valley dogs. they work pretty well. I might try screwing in some more bracing with 2x lumber and flat notching the log where it meets its support for better bearing.It doesnt sound so complicating when you read it from Sobon in his book, but he is also "the man". Was hoping Gabel might have insight , as he seems to be be quite adept at hewing like a lot of the tf-ers in this forum, judging by that history channel footage he had. Thanks again all.
