Jim
I first saw the term in one of Hodgson's books. I took it to mean much the same as you, having done the same, but with a plane or planer when using square rule on a twisted piece.
I saw a few examples of counterhewing recently on a roof we were working on. The interesting thing about these timbers is that they were hewn on 2 sides and sawn on 2 sides (hewn square and then quartered by the sawmill). The building is 1851 and is all square ruled. 40' span queenpost trusses. 5 3/4" in 12" roof pitch.
Anyway, as you can imagine, the framer used the sawn sides as the reference faces, but on a few pieces due to wind or out of square sawing, the ends (on the reference face) were resurfaced with an adze and/or plane to make them true. I suppose it wasn't technically counterhewing, as he didn't use a broadaxe, but the effect was the same.
