Oxfordshire Woodland Group

A 38 foot long slightly ogee shaped log was bucked (cut) to length to produce 2 x 17ft lengths plus a 4ft offcut that can be used as bunking or as a log bearer.

The aim of hewing or any conversion method (like sawing) is to produce a regularised timber where the removal of wood is minimised. It is also necessary to remove sapwood especially on timber joint bearing faces since sapwood will be prone to rot and insect attack.

The size of beam produced can be increased by accepting a bit more sapwood and wane at the top end of the log. This reduces waste and hewing effort.

Ken Hume

This 16.5 foot tie beam needs 3 supporting bunks to carry the beam and the hewing foot bunks.

The log and hewing bunks are fixed together using both long and short log dogs. The long dog acts as a brace to prevent longitudinal displacement (parallelogram action) between the log and bunk.

Towards the end of the log where the amount of wood (thickness) to be removed is increasing the hewing axe is levered towards the outside at the end of each stroke and this causes the wood fibres to separate and produce a fleshy cut.

Care has to be taken to watch the slicing cut propagation and a few vertical strokes to the top surface can sever any deviating fibres helping to prevent the cut line to wander.

Where the thickness of cut is too great to allow the use of fleshing cuts the the wood to be removed is juggled. This requires the wholesale removal of a good chunk of wood using hefty swipes of the axe with the scoring cut acting as a hinge or stop depending on how deep the scoring cut has been made.

Finished rough hewn face showing the increased amount of heart wood emerging towards the base of the log.

Short gentle strokes with the hewing axe can clean up the rough hewn surface to produce a fine finished face ready for layup in the timber-frame.

Unfortunately rain stopped play before the log could be completley finished.

Ken Hume