Early Logging and Hewing video

Thanks Square_peg and Agent_H for reviving this post. I hope it gets more interest up for Broadaxes and Hewing.
 
garry3 said:
Some more I came across. Modern but pretty good I think.
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His felling axe performed poorly but his hewing axe performed well. I was really surprised by the length of the handle on the hewer but he make quick work with it.
 
garry3 said:
Some more I came across. Modern but pretty good I think.
Click to expand...

He has great skill with those tools but I think they were undersized for the work. He was really bent over for the joggling. I've tried that with a boys axe and a cruiser and quickly went back to a full size 32"-34" haft axe. And I think the hewing axe was also a little undersized. But there's no arguing with the outcome. He hewed a very true beam. Full marks for the hewer.
 
Curt Hal said:
This Finnish video is one I watch a lot. I like to think it's how things would have looked in my part of North America.
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I find the construction technology very interesting. Lots of axe work and a better understanding of that axe design.
I don't fully understand how the hewing axe secures to the haft after it's reversed though.
 
garry3 said:
Do you know what the construction is all about? What the buildings for?
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Title:
"Virkesberedning - Rekonstruktionen av Södra Råda medeltidskyrka"

"Timber Processing - The reconstruction of the Southern haughty medieval church"

Description:
"Published on Sep 8, 2015
Timmermannen Olof Andersson bereder en stock med yxa. Filmen är inspelad 13-14 maj, 2014, i Södra Råda, Värmland (alldeles intill gränsen mot Västergötland). Ljud, kamera och redigering: Gunnar Almevik och Christina Persson. En film från Hantverkslaboratoriet."

"Published on Sep 8, 2015
Timmermannen Olof Andersson prepares a log with an ax. The film is shot 13-14 May 2014, in the Southern Råda, Värmland (right next to the border with Vastergotland). Sound, camera and editing: Gunnar Almevik and Christina Persson. A film from the Handicraft Laboratory."



*Google translate - I don't speak Swedish :)

That Finnish log building video is always worth watching again. I have watched that one many times but just now noticed the beetle used at 4:07min - always obsessed with the axes I guess lol.
 
Old Axeman said:
There has been some recent interest in hewing. I thought I would bring this forward again for anybody who is interested in how American hewers did it traditionally ( some still do hew this way!)
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This and several other very pertinent hewing threads got buried, thank you Old Axeman.
 
Ernest DuBois said:
10.3203/IWF/D-1875
This one is good for showing the almost complete process up through the squaring off.
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That is interesting, taken to octagon, then bored through. That contraption certainly takes a few guys to work!

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This was a demonstration video to show what, in America, was called a pump auger in use. I first noticed the modern hard hats (looked like a "tin hat" as we called the aluminium ones) with face shield, then the younger guys clothes and hair cuts, and in the credits it was made 1980. It is important to document these kind of things by getting older people who knew how. The pump augers were used to make wood water pumps and wood water pipe (what it looks like they were making) I liked their log jack used in the woods scene. There is nothing wrong with demonstration videos (with people who actually know what they are doing unlike a LOT of internet videos by bone heads), but, I prefer vintage videos of actual on going work.
In the early 1960's I was logging a tract of oak/hickory in West Virginia. I ran into an old boy, Gus, who had a steam powered saw mill way back in the mountains. He only used the sawdust, bark, and slabs to power the mill. Gus told me "The harder I saw, the harder I can saw" He also had a pump auger set up at the mill that was left over from early days when his father ran the mill. We enjoyed each others company and he wanted me to buy the mill and keep it going as nobody else was interested. I was very interested, but it never happened. Uncle Sam had other ideas for me.
 
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Square_peg said:
I don't speak German. Why were they boring a hole in it?
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"Boring of an oak-trunk to be used as a pump. A high oaktree is felled, cut to length, loaded on a wagon by means of a lever-chest and taken to the cartwrights-yard. The 5 m long trunk is trimmed octogonal with axe and broad-axe and then bored lengthwise by a handdriven boringdevice (machine), which runs forth and back on a guideway. Boring starts from one end to about half the length of the trunk, then from the other end, until both boreholes meet. Finally the upper two metres of the trunk are rebored for the pumppiston."

from Abstract
https://av.tib.eu/media/11150
 
Old Axeman said:
This was a demonstration video to show what, in America, was called a pump auger in use. I first noticed the modern hard hats (looked like a "tin hat" as we called the aluminium ones) with face shield, then the younger guys clothes and hair cuts, and in the credits it was made 1980. It is important to document these kind of things by getting older people who knew how. The pump augers were used to make wood water pumps and wood water pipe (what it looks like they were making) I liked their log jack used in the woods scene. There is nothing wrong with demonstration videos (with people who actually know what they are doing unlike a LOT of internet videos by bone heads), but, I prefer vintage videos of actual on going work.
In the early 1960's I was logging a tract of oak/hickory in West Virginia. I ran into an old boy, Gus, who had a steam powered saw mill way back in the mountains. He only used the sawdust, bark, and slabs to power the mill. Gus told me "The harder I saw, the harder I can saw" He also had a pump auger set up at the mill that was left over from early days when his father ran the mill. We enjoyed each others company and he wanted me to buy the mill and keep it going as nobody else was interested. I was very interested, but it never happened. Uncle Sam had other ideas for me.
Click to expand...
There was a sizable steam powered mill set up on this farm back in the 30's, just before my grandfather bought the property. The owner must have operated by the same adage, "The harder I saw, the harder I can saw". The boiler exploded in 1936, and killed 4 of the 5 guys who were working there.

As a kid it sure was spooky to me to have to go get the old milk cow on a foggy morning when she was down in the pasture next to the spot where that old mill was.
 
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