Some more pics of hewing, because if any of you all are at all like me then you love to see the work of others.
This was notched with a felling axe from above, because I was working alone today
Notching the split face. Splitting a log and hewing has the advantage of not giving you a boxed heart, but it has its disadvantage too. The wood toward the center of the tree tends to be hard an knotty, and sometimes rotten too.
this kind of shows my 'split from above' method. With a wide axe like this, it works best when the juggles are just a little longer than the axe itself (so you're not cutting into 2 juggles at once, and getting use of the full length of the bit) and it also seems to work best for general splitting if you chop straight down.
nasty spot. A consequence of this face being toward the center of the tree.
The kind of finish I strive for if the timber is going to be exposed, and if the project calls for nicely finished timbers. I wouldn't go to this much trouble for barn timbers, or on things like joists and rafters (in most cases) But these are posts, so they need to have the nicest finish.
When I do the finishing strokes with my Gransfors axe, it is important to note that I am not chopping down at the wood. I use a very precise motion, where the cutting stroke is a combination of downward splitting force and a lateral cutting motion. Essential I 'sweep' the axe across the wood, pulling it slightly toward me as it makes contact so it is slicing and not so much chopping. This will yield a very smooth and straight face that is easy to plane.
ya! that looks nice!
About planing: I said earlier that I wished I had a scrub plane for finishing, but I have since learned that the scrub plane was NOT historically used in this way, the plane i currently use, the Jack plane, is in fact the correct tool. I got lucky on that one.
I tried something new today too. At one point, the wooden handle on my felling axe (which is the worst of all my axes right now) broke on me, so I could no longer use it to notch the logs. SO i was forced to find other ways to do it. Then I tried a method I had heard about, notching the log on the top, then turning it to hew that face. I had never tried this method because it seemed to me that all the extra work in snapping 2 lines for each face and turning the log an extra time seemed like a waste, but now I am a fan! I was forced to do this, because the only axes I had left were relatively short handled. It works well, and I would recommend you try it. At least it works well if your log is relatively high off the ground like mine are.
