Hi Ranger, and everyone else, great thread, and one close to my heart.

I too have been on the sidelines, getting a handle on all the suggestions put forward.

For many years I demonstrated and taught the art of Traditional hewing, and it always happened in the hot season right through till fall. In the old logging camps the season for logging and hewing was winter--big time--so we really are trying to do something that would normally not be done by the old timers --period--hew in the heat!!

We floated our logs in the mill pond to discourage those evil bugs, but they still managed to chew on the upper exposed parts. Hewing as everyone knows makes no use of the outside of the log, it all ends up in the scrap pile anyway. One thing that floating does is keep the moisture level high in the log so that the hewing process is easier and leaves a nice finish.

Long logs take a while to square up especially if you are working in the heat of the summer, from one day to the next the dry air will start to split the finished surface as you work around the log. I always kept the upper or finished surface, covered with a 1" board to shield it at the end of each day. Upon finishing the hewing process the timber went into an open storage shed until needed.

Without a means to float the logs, I suggest using a fire hose to wet them down thoroughly once a week, and shielding from the direct sun's rays.

One of the suggestions from the posts before me was to run them through a mill to bring them down to 1" oversize, not a bad idea in my books, it would remove the sapwood layer that the bugs like, and them pile them indoors, and try and keep them as green as possible. It is hard to beat floating them in some kind of a bath

NH