Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions historic hewing questionnaire

If there was real interest wouldn't the poster speak to the topic?

Is the interest perhaps in selling human hair thingys from other continents and countries?

Will, me thinks that post is a spambot.

Standing by, ever vigilant.

...with a spambot swatter.

Hello everyone today:

well I don't very often sit down in the dayime especially when my help is required eslewhere around this dairy ranch, but I just thought that I would look in to my chat site and to the other very interesting sites to see what is happening.

I had a call to visit an old barn and help the owner make some informed decisions about the sequences required to straighten up and stabilize her building which I commend her for wanting to preserve rather than tear down the normal practice it seems.

It continues to amaze me how the old timers moved buildings and attached them to existing buildings, and remodelled the structures to exhibit a lovely continuation of the exterior roof lines.

That is what happened in this case but in doing so there is some compromises that happen, and sometimes thse compromises cause frame failures to happen when major weather disturbances throw the book at us, I think back to the ice storm that piled 3 to 4 inches of ice on the roofs of old and modern structures, straining and bowing the timbers and trusses to their breaking point. I must say though that most of the older buildingsbuilt without engineering reports papers etc seemed to have been put up with a fair amount of extra strength

ewnjoy

NH

hello everyone tonight

Sorry for being away so long but duty called me down on the farm, and I can't refuse the needed help out there.

Today I had a meeting to explore a call to restore 2-- 6" cannon frames, the material is 6" white oak and would no doubt be a very interesting project. I will keep you guys and gals updated as time goes along.

NH

thanks

Hi,
hewing can be more than just one thing. There are lots of different techniques and idiosyncrasies but I wonder if these have names, particularly regarding surface appearance. A beam hewn tangentially results in a different surface appearance then one hewn along the length. Also, somewhere in this very forum is a link to a picture of some hewn work out of Finland with a very particular surface appearance. Are these various hewing forms named in a way that someone could make a reference to them other than to describe an action or location?

Don Wagstaff

Hi Cecile,

That pic of the hewing styles employed in Finland might well be an extract from an article that I wrote for Timber Framing nearly 10 years ago and this can still be downloaded from :-

Visit to Finland

The article contains photos of the hewer, axe and finish (forgive the pun) obtained on Scots pine logs on a church at Karsamaki.

I agree with you that we are heading towards a point where someone really needs to compile and document in a paper for publication of a full collection of hewing tools, styles, signatures, finishes obtained, etc., used to convert logs for both academic and craft reference purposes.

I would encourage you all to download a watch all 4 videos (20mb each) from :-

Viking ship construction

where you will see wedged cleaving and "T" axe hewing of monster oak to produce clinker planks and a mast fish and also how pine tar is made in Finland which is used in Viking ship construction.

When you all get your jaws off the ground we can talk again.

Regards

Ken Hume

Amazing.