I've been having fun hewing some timbers for a little toolshed I'm going to build this spring. There is a little patch of Bigtooth poplar that are on their way out and I decided to use them, being not much use for anything else other than woodpecker housing. The third tree I felled was big enough that I am trying to get two timbers out of some of the logs. I'm shooting for 4 inch wide timbers for the horizontal members of the frame more or less.
A big criticism of hewing timbers vs sawing them is the amount of wood that is wasted. When your log is close in diameter to the diagonal measure of your timber, the waste would equate to the slabs, but if you are looking for smaller timbers from a large log a lot of otherwise useable wood ends up as chips.
I wanted to split these logs in half to get two 4-inch timbers, this would get me more timbers out of one tree. I had already hewn three sides in the last couple days. My basic technique was to perforate the center-line with my chainsaw and then split the timber with wedges ( quick and dirty gluts). Obviously this is not a historical technique, but these timbers have seen a lot more axe work than chainsaw.
It worked OK. I did not get a lot of axe work in, other than sharpening the gluts and smacking them home. In the next few days I'll try and hew up these split faces a bit.
The pair from the smallest log are basically unusable. It's easy to see why you see so many of these poplars broken off after strong winds.
A big criticism of hewing timbers vs sawing them is the amount of wood that is wasted. When your log is close in diameter to the diagonal measure of your timber, the waste would equate to the slabs, but if you are looking for smaller timbers from a large log a lot of otherwise useable wood ends up as chips.
I wanted to split these logs in half to get two 4-inch timbers, this would get me more timbers out of one tree. I had already hewn three sides in the last couple days. My basic technique was to perforate the center-line with my chainsaw and then split the timber with wedges ( quick and dirty gluts). Obviously this is not a historical technique, but these timbers have seen a lot more axe work than chainsaw.
It worked OK. I did not get a lot of axe work in, other than sharpening the gluts and smacking them home. In the next few days I'll try and hew up these split faces a bit.
The pair from the smallest log are basically unusable. It's easy to see why you see so many of these poplars broken off after strong winds.