Oxfordshire Woodland Group

At the beginning of September the OWG woodland cruck project was visited by 28 members of The Oxfordshire Buildings Record where a short demonstration was made of hewing the outside face of No 3 cruck blade foot.

The outside face was hewn down using fleshing techniques taking care to keep legs well away from the axe swing hewing arc.

The outer face was then cleaned up by shaving swings of the axe removing cuts as small as one eighth of an inch.

The cruck blade was then turned through 90 degrees and the surface cleaned with a few swipes of the draw knife. A couple of scoring marks remain on the outside face of the cruck foot.

Scoring marks can be seen on medieval timbers.

This blade has been cut from nominally smaller diameter stock because of the heart rot removal requirement and so minimal wane was needed to be removed from the outside face shaving the timber down to expose heartwood in the area that will form part of the cruck blade foot tenon.

Ken Hume - Oxfordshire Woodland Group