You may have noticed lots of references here lately to hand hewing and broad axes. Call it research, I guess, because I’m still debating how I will acquire, and then work with and move those white oak timbers I mentioned earlier.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this quality video. Really well shot, very clear, very easy to understand the process of hewing here. Check it out!
I read a great post last night on the Holder Bros. industry blog about hand hewing beams with broad axes. It’s worth a mention here!
Beams that are hand hewn get a flat face treatment with nothing more than a felling axe and a broad axe. This is how beams were converted from round logs before the age of cheap fuel and portable mills and all that jazz.
This weekend, I attended an excellent firewood workshop at the Clark Conservation Area here in northeast Missouri. My primary motivator was the promised access to timber that would be granted by simply attending the workshop. I came away from the workshop quite excited by the possibility of obtaining free white and black oak logs perfect for timber framing, but very stuck as to how in the heck I could pull off getting the material actually out of the woods.
Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading online about hand tools, especially those for timber framing. A couple of websites have caught my eye recently (which I’ll mention soon elsewhere), and during one of those late night reading ventures I stumbled upon this excellent video about the history and transformation of the Gränsfors Bruks axe company of Sweden, one of the top hand-forged tool manufacturers around.
I’ve been reading snippets about the company and its products elsewhere (mostly in catalogs), but this video gave me a much broader knowledge of the company than before, and I must say, it was very satisfying. Inspiring.
The mighty central bent in the Wabi-sabi kitchen
A bit over a week ago, we raised our mighty giant of a bent for the kitchen. It’s the bent we’ve been working on for weeks and weeks – an assembly of three posts, and a beam with a scarf joint. The beam in question is a gigantic, curving sycamore joined to a cannon of an oak, supported on the south side by a stout poplar, in the middle an oak with a coped shoulder and through tenon (that runs through the scarf), and on the south another oak post. Put together, we guessed that the bent weighed in around 1800 pounds. No joke!
Our new Millers Falls boring machine
We’ve been looking for a boring machine for a year or more. Last fall, we saw two at the local flea market on the same day, but for some reason we decided to pass on both at the time. I can’t remember why.
This year, in May during our timber frame workshop weekend, we had a chance to use Tom Cundiff’s Millers Falls machine. Wow! It was a workout, but made boring holes for mortises much more practical with human power. Since then, we’ve been looking pretty steadily.
It’s sad that power tools just completely lack the character and charisma (and oftentimes, quality) of a well-designed hand tool… This is a Kent pattern axe. (Or hewing hatchet, or broad axe.) This year has been a good education in handling more hand tools that I have not used much before.
Our freshly raised black walnut bent
In this post, I’m going to rewind back to June of this year when Wabi-sabi hoisted its first timber frame bent to vertical. (A “bent” is a cross-sectional assembly of posts and beams, part of the framing of a timber frame structure.) This particular bent was composed of two roundwood oak posts, and a hewn black walnut beam, with a span of around 18 feet. No small feat!
Wow, I am way behind in reporting news on Wabi-sabi’s kitchen construction. Things are happening, I assure you. Even though it might not look like it when you walk by our site every day. (Timber framing ain’t a quick job…)
The biggest thing to have happened in some time just took place last week when we raised our biggest bent yet – a lunker composed of three posts, and one long beam with a scarf joint, the same assembly we worked on during our timber frame workshop in May. The thing must have weighed nearly 2000 pounds, and we used a super slick system of pulleys and human power to raise the beast.
Anyway, you’ll have to wait for my own personal account of the event (I swear I’ll post some video soon!), but thankfullly Alline of Dancing Rabbit has posted her own eyewitness account of the event with plenty of photos.
It was an intensely exciting and rewarding day, I’ll say. More soon! I mean it, Mom and Dad (and all you other readers that don’t pester me as much).
Conceptual drawing of our new house (north view)
Things are definitely shaping up in our new house design process. We are super excited to be collaborating with a few folks on this project, very notably Tom Cundiff of The Edgeworks, who is assisting with the design of a slick timber frame for what we are calling “Strawtron”, our new straw bale timber frame house project.
This fall, we plan on breaking ground for Strawtron, a three room, passive solar, straw bale-insulated house with a timber frame, greenhouse for passive heat and extended living space, screened-in north porch, and 1/2 story loft with a west-facing balcony.
But there’s plenty to do before that happens…
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
