Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Practice splitting match stems with the axe for a few
years and you get the idea.
A log rolls around a lot while it's being hewed, and
you should stabilize it. I sometimes hew the log where
it falls, leaving the treetop connected and maybe even
part of the stump to steady it until I'm through. If you
can't do this, flatten two places on the underside of the
log and roll it onto crossways timbers. Or get a pair of
hewing dogs, which were iron stays driven into the log
and the cross timbers to hold things steady.
You may have read about hewing from the top of
the log down, which is fine in theory, but knots tend
to head uphill and are easier to slice through from the
butt end. Although the swell at the base is easier to
hew from the top, I like to cut this off anyway. Switch-
ing means rolling the log over. Being able to chop
either right- or left-handed, I keep two axes handy and
use both. That way I torture new muscles.
There is a mystique about converting tree trunks
into hewn timbers that is quite compelling. It is Her-
culean labor, but it will nevertheless remain one of the
most satisfying experiences of your log house building
— in retrospect, that is. With that heavy, heavy axe,
you are shaping a second life for the tree you've felled,
feeling the steel bite into living wood, to ringing
echoes of the hill country past.
These short log sections were left when adjoining windows were
sawed out of the original cabin. When building new, very few logs
need be full length. These spanners above windows and doors are
full length and carry the ceiling joists.
You're Pulling My Leg
Let me here digress to try to clear up what I regard as
misinformation about hewn log walls. I have read and
heard of the practice of constructing round-log cab-
ins, then hewing down the walls
in situ.
Nancy McDo-
nough, in her book
Garden Sass,
quotes an old-timer
from the Ouachitas as being familiar with this prac-
tice. D. A. Hutslar mentions “scutched” logs as those
superficially hacked after the house was up. This was
sometimes done to a thicker log when furring strips
were nailed up later for siding to go on.
I've used the broadaxe for many years, and have
probably hewn more logs than the average pioneer in
his entire life, yet I wouldn't attempt to hew logs in a
standing wall. My brother is an artist with a broadaxe,
and can shave a f-inch layer end to end, and he
wouldn't try it either. I know dozens of veteran hackers
who couldn't do it, and never heard of its being done.
Working the lower half-dovetail with the adze. The log is upside down.
Apprentice Willie Lehmann and my son, Charlie, lay out a top half-
dovetailed notch at a demonstration in the National Building Museum
in Washington, D.C. The slope can either be taken from the notch of
the log above, as here, or laid out with a tapered template and level.
