Hello everyone tonight

Well its nice to get back to some of the basics of timberframing, without the hewn material nothing would have gotten done for sure--

As I look at the above pictures many feelings of emotion come to life, the smell of the white pine, the methodical sound of the axes biting into the wood, the wide eyed children and their parents passing by, the men who have strayed away from their wives to take in and mavel at the slow emerging square timber from the round baulks.

From time to time I talk about how we set up our timbers for hewing, we always kept timbers close to the ground and well anchored with the hand made timber dogs--they were not fancy just round iron bars bent and pointed, we had three different lengths in set of three to accomodate small and larger timbers

As you look at the last picture that I posted you can visualize I am sure how much heavier the timber side to be hewn is than the opposite side which has already been squared up.

The hewing process creates a fair amount of vibration and without proper stability can become hazardous if it happens to work loose, the timber rolling in the direction of the hewer who would have been standing close beside the log

enjoy

NH