I want to talk a little about the tools used for hewing too.
Personally, I am an axe man. I love the axe, I think it is the perfect tool (that's not an exaggeration at all) See my latest post on the Daisy Wheel Design thread to learn why I have such an opinion of this king of all tools. To me, scoring the log with a chainsaw is like cheating. It seems like an insult to the timber, like a lack of respect for the material you are working with. With the axe, you and the log are having a friendly conversation, and the log is learning to see things your way, all the while you are learning quite a bit about it. With the saw for scoring, you miss a lot of this information that could come in handy on down the road, while juggling and later when using the timber. The first bite of the axe tells you quite a bit about the wood, and so does each bite from that point.
Now back to tools (sorry, I'm in a very mystic, philosophical mood today)
I use a number of axes when hewing any one log. Previously I used a gransfors bruks broad axe as my only broad axe. It's truly a wonderful tool, but it's not the ideal tool for every job. I recently acquired an American symmetrical broad axe (I mounted it for left hand use for the time being so that 2 people could work on a face at once) with a 12" bit. I was absolutely amazed at how good a job this tool did.
This tool is vastly inferior in quality to my nice (expensive) Swedish axe, but it's design and more importantly its sheer mass are a tremendous benefit. When I got it the blade was full of nicks, the head itself was rusty and gummy for some reason. I spent several hours with a file, a sander, and some WD40 and got the thing back to working condition, and made a nice new hickory handle for it. Using this axe is so much faster.
I love my gransfors axe, dont get me wrong. I use it now to do the things my other axe can't. I use it to clean up any messy spots and smooth out irregularities. I also use it for carving, shaping, and some for joinery, kind of like an Austrian style carpenter's axe which is really just a small broad axe.
I am also impatiently awaiting the arrival of 2 German-style goosewing axes to ship from Austria, 1 is a medieval pattern axe and the other is a little different that I intend to mount on a long handle.
By the way, I NEVER use an adze for hewing. TO me an adze is a tool for joinery and such.
I have come to the conclusion through further study that the German's don't really use any kind of a special axe for cutting notches. From what I can tell they seem to be nothing more than a small forest type axe, similar in size to the Gransfors (or wetterlings for that matter) forest axe. For this taks I just use whatever is at hand, but a small bit seems to work the best -although currently my Gransfors broadaxe does find use for cutting notches.
The goosewing that I intend to hand with a long handle will be used hopefully for 1 man hewing, as to be seen in the video Ken posted earlier.
I also like my new Stossaxt, which is good for cleaning up rough spots
So what are some of the tools you all use?
