Hi everyone tonight:

Thanks also Ken for providing such a educational peek into the historical subject of hewing. I can access the site but I cannot play the video just a few frames and then it quits on me. Can anyone help me out--thanks in advance

I hope that everyone is enjoying your find.

Also Daiku thanks for jumping in and just maybe providing hard copies for those that might want to broaden out their knowledge on Tie hewing here in North America.

NH

Clark,

I'll clamor for the reading material.

Thanks,
TW

Hi everyone tonight:

Well I have been away for a while but life has to go on in other areas although this is one of my favorite ones, with your guys and gals in historic "wood working world".

You know as I look at the information that Ken sent on hewing it seems to me that our North American style of hewing adapted some of the best features of other countries that is represented, while retaining the safety features of our type of hewing.

It is just like the styles of timberframing it appeared to change about every 150 to 200 years.

For instance the Pennsylvania "people" that immigrated up into Upper Canada about 1784 seemed to switch quite quickly to the 3 bay style of barn construction, and at least around here only a sprinkling of the "large Anchor Beam" central isle barns were built and then things seemed to change about 1800.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why this old established style of construction faded away so quickly?

Anxious to hear your thoughts---------

NH

Hi NH,

Good question. I can only speculate why immigrants often dropped certian styles of barn after settling into their new territories.

Perhaps a combination of tehnological advances and environmental factors are behind barn evolution. Here in New England, in the early days, the "English Barn" soon gave way to the gable-entry "New England Barn."

As many know, expansion and serviceability were problamatic with the side-entry English barns. A center isle w/ a door at each end allowed a wagon to reach all areas of a New England barn even if it was expanded (wich was done by simply adding bents to the rear). And w/ two doors, no need to turn the wagon around to exit.

America expanded too and farms grew. Sheep farming gave way to dairy here in Maine, which required ever-bigger barns w/ larger haylofts, etc. Steeper roofs, longer buildings... Doors no longer swung open, but slid on tracks because you didn't need to shovel as much in order to slide a door open in winter.

The introduction of sawn stock may have also played a role in barn design. Those mammoth anchor beams come to mind. Ease of construction w/ sawn stock maybe got rid of the anchor??... Why hew a anchor beam if you didn't really need to...

The open "post-free" space the anchor beam afforded might have become less important as well. I don't know much about why the Dutch built this way.

Recently, I was at a site where some volunteers were hewing some logs for a small house that would hopefully represent a settlement house of their area.

One volunteer was using a board axe that he owned and claimed was fitted with a handle that was "field reversible". That is he could just pull the wedge in the handle end and reverse the head so that it could hang the other way. That way he could hew either left handed or right handed as he felt the need.

Him seemed to think that this was a standard "feature" that this head and handle were made this way on purpose.

Being new to broad axes and handles, I had never seen or heard of such a thing.

I was wondering if anyone else out there in hewing world has heard of such a thing?

Signed inquiring mind....

Jim Rogers

i've seen but not used an axe like this. laurie's hardware store in thunder bay ontario had one - though apparently, as i was told by the old finn in the armchair who minded the shop- it was not for sale because he liked it so much just to look at it. as i recall it had a removable wedge as you describe Jim to make it left or right handed. i wonder how that would be handy. maybe to accommodate changing grain, but one would need to be ambidextrous or chop cross handed?

Thanks for your reply.

thinking about how it would be useful, i was reminded of that japanese hewing video on youtube, where the craftsman comes against a tough knot, stops, then comes at it from the other side. but would you switch around the axe head just for that? or maybe to move from standing on the log, chopping on the right hand side of the timber say, and then getting down beside it for close work with the timber on the right. ???

Hi everyone tonight:

Well we seem to have gotten back to the subject of broad axe handles.

Reversible broadaxe handles are pretty neat, in fact I have made a few of them myself from an antique specimen that I happened to come by in a collection of tools.

They are not easy to make but real handy especially if say the broadaxe was handled down from generation to generation and the new person's hand orientation changed say from right to left.

Another senario would be that the axe would find its way to a new home and the new owner's hand orientation was opposite of the original owner.

Thanks for coming on board both of you

NH

Hello everyone tonight:

I would like to go back a few entries to "Our barns's" comment about the evolution of "English barns" to "New England Barns".

The descripton of each type seems to put the "New England Barns" having the same characteristics as The olde Dutch style barns with the central Isle, and the large anchor beams with exits at each end, while the "English barns" use a side entrance with a barn floor that also exits each side of the structure.

Up here in Upper Canada the English barn seems to have caught on after the advent of the "Dutch style or New England barn" mainly because of the ease of filling ie; the mows are located on one side of the barn floor, extending right up to the peak.

I guess that I am taken back alittle that it seems that in the New England the English barns predated the "New England Barns" whereas in our area the reverse seems to be true.

Maybe we need alittle bit more clarification on this issue,

Thanks all for coming on board

NH