Dave,
No ship masts around here!
Railroad ties, yes. However, often times a sleeper axe would have been a different profile.
The long handled axes do indeed work for hewing barn timbers. You just don't kneel when using them. These are to be used standing mostly upright working a timber at maybe waist height or lower.
We know this was in fact the case, because there are a few contemporaries who bothered to write it down.
But like I said earlier, you can tell when examining the timbers many times that these big single beveled axes were used. You can also at times find timbers that were hewn out with just the narrow axe. The finish is a lot different. To date I have yet to see an authentic timber that was at all hewn with an adze.
What, I wonder, did you think may have been used in stead?
