Hi Cecile,
Thanks for the reply, and please indulge me if you don't mind? This is a topic I don't get to explore with too many that have your skill sets with hewing or perspective.
Take my words (please) from the academic perspective, and only challenging from this view point in trying to understand more, and/or form more lucid and coherent viewpoints of my own.
Thanks again, ahead of time...
...It's neither the one nor the other.
Grabbing the chainsaw, it could be any cross cut saw but ok, to speed things along is fine...
So, we are on the same page on at least that point...
You can see the benefit and expeditious effect a hand or power saw has. Almost any type of cross cut saw works well...even a battery powered circular saw with a radius jig does the trick nicely if doing this a lot...
The joggles then can be made even closer together, if one chooses, with little extra work...
...but it does mean flipping the stem an extra time and getting it rightly aligned, making more or less sense depending on conditions innumerable, difficult to quantify...
Ooh...???...I don't think that is even close to accurate or true, from my perspective of what is done, but that very well could have to do with our individual approach modality to setting up a hewing station.
I imagine (from your description) your approach is of course some form of Western or European method...?
From that perspective, I would agree that "flipping the stem" may seem like a necessity and also much added labor...the way you must be thinking of it...???
However, my approach to setting up hewing is a modern adaptation of acient Middle Eastern and Asian systems and approaches of not only a hewing station, but also the general staging of a given timber for layout of joinery...not just hewing...
The bolt (aka stem) layout is a cross on the end first, then a template is used (most often) to create the given geometry on the end of the bolt. Sometimes this is even a tapered post, or has something like a spiral or related challenging geometry to the project. Once the bolt is set up and snapped, the bolt can get moved without any great issue of losing layout, orientation, or even bothering to pin down well...No more so than you would be concerned with a timber before joinery is cut in it...
Does that make sense as described?
... I always think its critical to set the log fast with dogs, line out perimeters of its beam inside and then cut two vertical and parallel sides without disturbing the log's position, no simple task that...
Agreed..."no simple task" at all, and way more the standard approach of fixing the bolt to a stationary stage while the work of hewing is performed on two adjacent parallel plans of a given bolt...
That is a standard "axe method" as you find anywhere something is hewed...even in Japan, though they (and I) often do it in bare feet for a better grip of the log and/or footing when employing such methods. When a rougher axed or hewn affect is desired then this approach is often the way to go, but now with the other method combined into this the ax strictly becomes a "finishing tool" alone...
...It's another way of saying, is the method ideological or are there also practical reasons.Still I do count myself among those practitioners choosing a slightly different way of working than the one calculated in conventional terms...
That is interesting that you view yourself between the ideological and the modified while still willing to adapt hewing to your own personal dynamic. Which, in many ways, like all the traditional wood arts, they are very much an individual expression of body dynamic and personal approach, even when under the guise or perspective of a fully traditionally ideology...
Regards,
j
