Hewing courses, happy times

Last week, Travis came to the woods for a two days hewing course. He trains at the Weald and Downlands Living Museum on the building conservation MSc. He obtained a grant from Heritage craft to develop new skills.

I like to take the trainee for a walk in the woods, talking about woodland management, the different species that can be used for construction and ultimately, tree selection, the most important part of the trade. We could spend up to five times more time trying to hew a badly selected tree.

Next step, get used to the different tools, axes are only a small part of the list.

Along marking, I showed him how the chalk line behaves on a curved surface, depending on how it is pinged (notice the difference between the red line, pinged randomly and the black one, pinged in the plane of the to-be-hewn face).

We've tried two different hewing methods : low on the ground using simple bearers and long handled axes.

And higher on hewing tressles, with short handled axes.

We went through tools sharpening and even made a quite special handle, taking the opportunity to use smaller axes in different positions, a shavehorse, a froe and a drawknife.

those beams will be used to frame a small bridge, entirely out of hand-processed sweet chestnut, again :)