Hewing a timber

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Square_peg

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In the drawknives thread I posted a picture of a timber that I had peeled. This afternoon I began hewing that timber into a beam.

I have a proper broad axe on order but I couldn't wait to get started so I went at it with what I had. I drew out my beam on the ends, snapped chalk lines down the timber and started by cutting kerfs down to my lines with a crosscut saw.

Scoring_the_first_side3.jpg
 
I began hewing with my little True Temper broad hatchet. But this hatchet isn't designed for this work. A proper hewing broad axe has an offset handle - to move the user's fingers away from the timber. This helps guard against 'barking your knuckles' - not a good thing.

This hatchet worked OK for the first 18"-20" or so but I soon realized that I couldn't continue with this tool. Thankfully I was wearing leather gloves when I discovered this.
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Begin_hewing.jpg
 
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Thankfully I have another broad hatchet, a Stubai, made in Austria. It has an offset handle.

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The bit (blade) of the hatchet is also slightly skewed from the line of the eye. This also helps keep your knuckles away from the work.

Skew_of_bit.jpg
 
This image shows the first side of the beam roughed out. I'll go back and clean it up later.

I may cut the opposite side with a chainsaw first, just to preserve a larger chunk of waste. This beam is just storm-fall but I still hate to waste any of it.

You can see how I hold the timber during hewing. I first clamp a 4x4 post to my saw horses. Then I clamp my timber to the 4x4 with a pair of ratchet straps. Notice that the cut line of my beam is just clear of the edge of my saw horses. I'll probably want to drop this whole setup down to a lower level when using the soon-to-arrive broad axe.

First_side_finished.jpg
 
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Here's a photo of my broad hatchets. Sorry, no eye candy. These are just working tools. The handles are wrapped with friction tape, something I've found helpful after 29 years of swinging hammers professionally. My hands aren't what they once were.

Broad_hatchets.jpg
 
Cool stuff. I did something similar with a short chunk of pine that I needed to make a big saw vice (still a work in progress). I used the juggle notches about 18" apart or something and that worked great. A regular axe with a curved bit (think michigan or hoosier pattern) seemed to be an acceptable substitute since the curved bit wouldn't cause tear out nearly as much.
 
Lastly, another tool I've found useful when working with timbers, a 2" x 11" wood chisel. This is just a quick-n-dirty tool that I forged out of need. It's made from an old broken pry bar.

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hewing is a lot of fun. after I cut and split more wood than I'd need for this winter, I took some leftover logs and messed around with them, hewing and notching and whatnot. loads of fun. the chips make good firestarting material, too!

I like your setup to hold the log. I don't have anything nearly as sophisticated. I have two short sections of log that are notched. lay the log across them, knock in a couple of log dogs, and I'm ready to roll.


thanks for the pics.


-ben
 
Cool stuff, hard to imagine that this was how a heck of a lot of beams were made back in the old days. Also, think of hand sawing boards!
 
bjp said:
I have two short sections of log that are notched. lay the log across them, knock in a couple of log dogs, and I'm ready to roll.
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I expect I'll want a setup like that when I get the full sized broad axe. Are the ends of your dogs turned 90° from each other? Or just pointed? Got pics? I'll be banging out a set pretty soon.
 
Liam Ryan said:
Also, think of hand sawing boards!
Click to expand...

Not sure if I'd rather be the guy on the bottom, pulling with gravity but eating sawdust all day, or the guy on top pulling against gravity.

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I'd certainly set this up with the wind at my back.
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I almost expect that most of the cutting was done on the down stroke and the guy on top would be lifting the saw, then pushing it into the cut, while the man on bottom would be doing the same thing in matched rhythm--lifting the saw, then pulling down while the top man pushed.

All I can say is that there's a reason saw mills were such a popular development! :eek:
 
Square_peg said:
I expect I'll want a setup like that when I get the full sized broad axe. Are the ends of your dogs turned 90° from each other? Or just pointed? Got pics? I'll be banging out a set pretty soon.
Click to expand...

here's a pic of the ones I have. bought them from Lee Valley, as I don't do anything at all that resembles metal work. these were the most affordable real-deal dogs I could find, and they work well so far as I can see. I'm not exactly an experienced log builder, though, so take my recs. with a grain of salt.

17u0503s1.jpg



-ben
 
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