Mike,
it is truly a wonder what people were able to accomplish in the past. We should remember, however, that people are still accomplishing some of these things in certain parts of the world -sometimes a lot closer to us than you might think. People can be quite clever when they have to use their wits to figure out how to do something with limited resources.
I do have a pretty specific goal in mind.
There is one downside, my plan requires very straight wood to work. Observation has told me that is what I have, at least in the vast majority of these trees. But if I do not have that, then I will have to go to plan b.
It is possible to split a twisted log contrary to its grain, however you will have to use your axe to cut through a lot of traveling grain. An easy species to split will work out about like hackberry using this method, so it is no walk in the park!
What you do is mark a straight line on the end of a log making sure it goes right through the pith of the log, and then mark a matching line on the other side (similar to what you would do when marking for hewing) You then chalk 2 lines along the length of the log, opposite each other.
You make a score along these lines, maybe 3 inches deep or a little more. This can be done with your axe, or if you want a chainsaw works too.
When you split the log, the split will then tend toward the scoring marks you made, since they create a greater line of weakness than the natural grain lines.
A good example of how this works, if you cut a notch the length of a green timber, a split will about always form right down the middle of that notch, even if the grain does not run right with it.
So you understand my method of cutting out smaller timbers, I will try and make up some drawings. -I will be getting a lot of timbers 5x5, with the biggest 8x8 (which will probably largely be cut from the heart, the smaller timbers cut out around it)-
I am still interested in knowing, however, what are some other methods without modern tools that may have been used to split such large trees? If shakes and clapboards were split out of such logs, they had to have some means of splitting them down to size...
