Thanks Don for the information and a link to that site I thoroughly enjoyed it--it is always nice to see someone else hewing, only then can you compare techniques, of which there are many
He is hewing close to the ground but not right on the ground from what I can make out--I may be wrong but that is the way I see it. It does look like there are some sort of timbers with their tops just above ground level supporting the log he is hewing.
I noticed that he straddled the log, and hewed against the round section, leaving the flattened section behind as he works along.
We here in this country hew along the flattened section with the handle curving out from the freshly flattened surface. It is interesting to see his technique, he has to keep his handle very high, and that means hewing more along the grain rather than down across the grain
I wonder what he would do with a log that was 36 feet long and 46" in diameter, he couldn't straddle it for sure, probably stood on top, but it would be interesting to see what technique he would use to square this log, I am sure he had one.
One thing I am sure he had to be very careful not to strike his handle on the unhewn section by his legs, especially with larger logs.
you mention in the second part of your post a reference to making gutters, I was trying to follow it along, it seems to me that you are hewing the gutter flat on the sides,bottom and top but how would the hollowing be done, we used gutter adzes and left the gutters round and flat on top, the surface that we gouged out to form the gutter