I learned to hew from Joe Erikson, who I beleive came to Canada to dodge the Viet Nam draft. He had worked in some museum in the USA and was working on a "strictly cash" basis at the time.
I found Joe by accident, my girlfriend at the time had taken an introduction to the trades course and she got placed with Joe afterward for two weeks. I got pulled out to the job site after a couple of days and Joe and I ended up working together for a couple of years.
The method Joe taught me was what he called "yard hewing" with the log at hip hieght and a short handled broadaxe. He would often finish up after hewing with a couple of handplanes and make a very nice looking log.
I remember once someone at a job asked Joe what the tolerance was for cutting stuff at one of our job sites
Joe said "zero".