Hello NH and All;

I wanted to comment on the adz techniques. From what I have read, adzs were swung a variety of ways. Sometimes coming up under the foot, sometimes between the feet, and I have seen a photo of a Japanese temple builder working in Hawaii with one foot on the ground, the other on the piece "chipping" diagionally. As Will said, hewing is for axes, "chipping" is for adzs. I have read accounts of adzs being nicknamed "the devil's shin hoe" and "Devil's shin eater" indicating they were sometimes used at shin height. Shipbuilder's adzs are often lighter and may have shorter handles since they were sometimes used overhead or on the sides of a ship. Also, there is such a thing as a butchering adz for processing meat.

Adzs are ancient tools and one of the very early spellings of adz is nads and nadge, in addition to many phonetic variations of adz and addice.

Salaman's Dictionary of Tools has illustrations of over thirty types of hand and foot adzs and other references in addition to the illustrations, but does not include any types of ancient adzs made of stone.

Take care;
Jim


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