Hewing

[Live Wood]

Hi everyone reading this,

           Recently had someone approach me to do some Hand Hewing, I definatly have experience in hewing, but not charging. Just curious, if anyone is willing to share: what should I charge per foot? Do you still charge the same hewing a 8x8x10 as a 6x6x10? Pine vs. white oak or walnut cost as well? What is the going rate for green white oak(Quercus alba) in the round and Black Walnut(Juglans nigra)? Lot of questions and probably kind of personal answers but hope to get some help??? Thanks, Keith!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwK0wKtAw3E

[customsawyer]

I think I would lean more toward a per hour rate. Remember they are not hiring you and your ax they are hiring your experience and knowledge.

[Magicman]

First, Welcome to the Forestry Forum, Live Wood.  I agree with customsawyer.  This seems to me that it is not high production work.  It is skilled work and also is very labor intensive.  Hourly rate.

[Live Wood]

Thanks for the quick response, Customsawyer and Magicman. This foresrty forum sure is full of friendly people!!! Hourley Rate, Huh? that sounds good I guess I just have to give them there moneys worth, I feel bad sitting down while making and hourley rate. Michael Beaudry's book "The axe wielders handbook" says that sitting down and enjoying nature and your surroundings is all part of hewing, while your resting your body. I guess I still feel bad because it is not possible to hew and not rest for hours on end. Am I worring to much?

[Live Wood]

If I charged by the foot I wouldnt feel bad for resting. this is why I cant make money! All I'm good at doing is making wood chips not money!!

[beenthere]

welcome to the forum.

Get the logs sawn to close to size you want, and mark them up to look hand hewn. Doubt anyone will pay you for all the labor of knocing off the surplus wood. Only interested in the marks.

Or a chainsaw mill, and take it from there. ??

[SwampDonkey]

Mom's uncle a few years back needed a timber for under a shed. Got my uncle to get his horse harnessed up and went and got a spruce and yarded it down to the house. The old fart was up there, at least 80 years old at the time, and hand hewed that log into a square timber after a few hours of carving away. He was a penny pincher and figured his time doing all that wasn't worth just going to town and getting the timber I guess. Well, I suppose if your just looking at exchanging paper for sweat. The wallet never got thinner was his main goal, just lost a little sweat as the time passed. :D

[Bibbyman]

My folks were tie hackers back in the early 1900s.  I inherited a nice broad axe from my dad.  I found he left it behind in early 1950s in the old house on the farm when he moved.  In the 70s I was looking through the old house that was falling down and found it in the only closet in the house.

Anyway,   I got the idea to learn how to use it and cut a few black oak logs about 10' long and 10" dia.  I worked at it some.  I tried to get my dad to come up and show me how it was done – or at least give me some directions.  He refused.  "You'll cut your foot off with that thing."

His axe was a "juggler" – meant to knock out big chunks after notches were hacked into the sides with a regular double bit axe.

They made and I have a "buzzard wing" broad axe that is much lighter and meant to do finish work after the heavy juggler knocked off the mass.

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use an adz?

[Dave Shepard]

Timbers were not finished with an adze, that is an old wives tale a mistake of Eric Sloanes, that he later recanted. You can tell this by looking at the marks left behind on timbers. The most efficient way to produce hand hewn timbers is to saw about a 1/2" over size for each face you are going to hew. This way you save the jacket boards for better things, unless you are getting logs that are just barely big enough for the timber. There is a break even point in hewn timbers, as the cost of sawn timbers gets higher the larger the timber, making hewn timbers more feasible.

Aside from the layout tools, there are only two things you need to hew a timber, the scoring axe, and the broad axe. I use a single bevel axe of about 8". The bigger axes, 10" to 14", were most likely used with long handles for ties or roughing out huge ship masts.

The new corner post you see in this photo started out as a 9"x13.5" sawn timber. I had to hew it in stages, as it was fit into each assembly. It probably took two to three hour of total hewing, in stages, to reduce it to an 8"x11.5" timber. Finished dimension was unknown, as it had to be scribed into two different assemblies. With a known finished dimension, you can saw closer to finished dimension, and save a little more time.

[tree-farmer]

Mighty fancy joinery on the beam in the fore ground. Is this a repair to a old structure? Noted the joints on 2 or 3 of the other timbers that look like extensions to replace rotted bits, is that correct?
Bucket list goal is to build small timber frame up in the woods here. Have lots of nice Poplar trees.
Nice work sir.

[Dave Shepard]

18 of 21 wall posts have either entirely new bottoms, or at least a free tenon repair. Two post tops are new as well. This frame is an 1801 Dutch barn from New York.

[northwoods1]

If you can't use and adze to finish a timber than what is a foot adze for ??? ???

Livewood that looks like a gransfor brooks axe , is it a hewing axe or does it have a double bevel on the blade. I have one just like that but it is a carpenters axe w/double bevel.
If your worried about sitting down while getting payed by the hour , than just don't charge while your sitting down resting :D
I would charge a lot!

[ARKANSAWYER]

  I often over size the cant on the mill then chip off the extra wood.  I often leave about an inch on each face then take a skill saw and cut a 3/4 deep kerf about every 12 to 18 inches then chop in with an axe at each kerf cut.  Then I either hew out with a broad axe or adze.
  Most of the time the adze is used for squaring an edge or flatting or hollowing a face.  But I have hewed several timbers out with one.  On small ones like a 3x5 it is easier to control then a broad axe.  Block planes are for smoothing a timber if needed.

  My GrandPa would roll a log up on to two "V" notched logs and take a cross cut saw and cut in to the log while increasing the depth of each kerf as he went down the down the log.  then he would take an adze and chip off that face.  Then he would roll the log 90 degrees and cut the kerfs again and on the remaining faces as well.  Then with the flat face back up he would take a broad axe and chip off the two sides and then turn the cant and get the bottom.  I have seen him make some very true timbers in a short time.  If he had to thin a timber or true up a corner he did it with the adze.
  When he hewed rr ties it was all done with an axe and broad axe and felled and bucked with a cross cut saw.  He and his brothers used to hack ties and stack them on a bluff on the Buffalo River somewhere below Big Creek and in a late spring flood throw the ties into the river and float then down to the White River and down to New Port Arkansas and sell them for $0.50 each stacked into a rail car.  They would break up their raft and buy supplies and maybe a mule and go back home.  They floated the ties close to 200 miles by river and had about a 100 mile walk back home.  It was big money at the time.  Now those were real men.   

[northwoods1]

My grandpa would use a stream of tobacco juice to make sure things were square as he was hewing  :D

[Bibbyman]

 



Here is Dad's old broad axe.

[Dave Shepard]

Floor boards were often random thickness. In order to use them in the house, they would have the back side planed down to a consistent thickness about an inch in on each side, the entire length of the board, then, you would adze the board down to that thickness just at the floor joists. Curves in timbers can be adzed, then finished with a spoke shave. The ends of clapboards would be adzed on a taper instead of butting them.