Axe and Woodworking

jake pogg said:
The best smiths were also the Smartest ones!...(else none of us would've had any tools to work with,or at least to do a Nice job,using Proper tools!:))
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Jake: If there is one thing my old shop teacher drove into that space between our ears in high school was, "every tool has a purpose, know what that purpose is and use it only for that purpose." I can not say I have abided by that rule at all times, although it is something I strive to do, as there have been a few times where I had to make do with what was available.

Ernest: I have mentioned my father's old hunting buddy George before. George was a carpenter and did block work and flat work in concrete and in my youth I used hang out with George on job sites that were nearby watching and asking questions and getting tools out of his 1941 Ford pickup while trying to stay out of his way. George did everything from digging trenches for foundation footings to putting the ridge cap on the roof and everything in between. Until I read your comments on grain structure above I had not heard anyone mention it since my youth watching and learning from old George and I am 68 years old in two months. I may be wrong saying this, but, I rarely see anyone studying the grain structure before using lumber these days.

As for the axe, i like it! I like the idea of the sighting plane on the top. I do not have any curved handled axes and have often wanted to try one.
 
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Hairy, what you recognize intuitively is on a structural level nothing less than the the result of the long-term assault on labor as it has been fragmented and made pliable, left to take what the bosses of industry have on offer, and like it too. George and his attitude toward a certain standard reflecting a position of relative strength when the worker could make demands on what was acceptable and what he could leave laying in the lumber yard for the owner to deal with himself. Gone are those days unless and until a sense of solidarity can be regained.
 
Also ripping to size first by scoring against, or into the raising grain then trimming with the falling grain.
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OK, twice in the same post. I agree with Ernest about how to hew a dimensional plank down to size using a single bevel hatchet/axe. Look at his pictures closely; he scored to the line by chopping into the grain to the line; he flipped the board over and hewed to the line with the flat, non bevel side (second picture), going with the grain the way you do with a hand plane. This is how I was taught. This technique is also shown in early books on how to do carpentry. There is a video somewhere on here of Peter Follansbee doing this wrong- he scores to the line but then does not flip the board to hew to the line from the other direction. It is unclear in his video which direction the grain is running.

Also, in another recent post someone asks about the way a American style flooring hatchet is used. The above process is exactly why the flooring hatchet has a single bevel. It is used to rough size floor boards this way and to remove tongues when needed with T&G flooring. The large flat poll is to drive the floor boards tight and the top of the head is flat for the same reason a carpenters half hatchet has a flat head- to work close to walls and corners.
 
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Old Axeman said:
Peter Follansbee doing this wrong- he scores to the line but then does not flip the board to hew to the line from the other direction. It is unclear in his video which direction the grain is running.
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Ok, but this figure is a green woodworker in the tradition of Mike Abbot, working in a medium with much broader parameters. Seasoned wood will discipline you.
 
Ernest DuBois said:
It's been said before, and I believe it too, but once the saw was introduced understanding of wood greatly diminishes. After all, sawing requires not so much reckoning with the structure of wood as a material, while working with an axe does.
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Such a ridiculous delusional and idiotic statement. For hundreds of years saws , axes and all non-powered tools for working wood existed and were used all at the same time, and there were different styles of saws for working across and with the grain, so the user certainly was aware of the structure of the wood.
 
gben said:
For hundreds of years saws , axes and all non-powered tools for working wood existed and were used all at the same time, and there were different styles of saws for working across and with the grain, so the user certainly was aware of the structure of the wood.
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That's not a ridiculous statement, so congratulations on your achievement.
 
A curious deal...(it'll loose a lot in my hurried/moronic telling,but can't resist:):

Somewhere in 1500's everything waterwheel-driven was coming into vogue,one of the serious changes were in sawing.
First single reciprocating mills,then eventually the gang jobs,several cuts at the same time.
The lumber they produced was of course lower quality,and all by definition flat-sawn,but the economics were right(they usually are for anything cheap and nasty:))

So one of the things that it revolutionized was(they tell me these things...you'd want to check on facts yourself:)) the boatbuilding.
Before,the time&energy for pit-sawing crap lumber didn't work out,weren't worth the loss in structural quality,but this here bizness made it actually practicable.

So the very essence of design has changed,instead of pretty much everything being clinker-built soft-chine craft it went to what eventually would be classed as a Dory-a hard-chined vessel planked longitudinally along it's bottom,carvel planked.

I'm not sure how it affected construction of dwellings,but imagine it probably did...Solid sheathing must originate somewhere around that phenomenon...

Also i'd imagine Packaging of all sorts,crating of stuff vs much more complex coopering...

The era of Planned Obsolescence was dawning!!!:)
 
jake pogg said:
Somewhere in 1500's everything waterwheel-driven was coming into vogue,one of the serious changes were in sawing.
First single reciprocating mills,then eventually the gang jobs,several cuts at the same time.
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In college I took a political science course called 'Technology and Change'. It talked about the rise of Western Europe as an industrial power. There were several causes for this. First, being a series of peninsulas it was easy to trade goods by sea. Trade encouraged efficiency and propserity. Second and more important was the Alps being centered in Western Europe. This created a snow pack relatively close to the sea and spring runoff that needed to lose a lot of elevation quickly - in short, an abundance of hydro power. It was those water driven mills that pushed Western Europe into becoming the world's industrial power.

500 years later those same conditions were discovered in the Pacific Northwest. The Cascade Range receives an abundance of precipitation coming in off the ocean. The mountains are high enough that much of it comes as snow. It all needs to get down to sea level in a hurry due to proximity of the mountains to the sea. Hydro power, it brought the aluminum industry and the Manhattan Project. The aluminum brought the aircraft industry. Technological trades sprang up around the aircraft industry. It all came together to create the what the NW has now - cheap power and technology. Microsoft and Google and Amazon keep massive data centers in the Columbia basin where they are powered by cheap hydropower. All these companies have built huge corporate campuses in the NW.

Those waterwheels have evolved over time and still play a huge role in our society.
 
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VERY cool,thank you,makes a lot of sense.

Yes,that Alpine run-off has also given the rise to Power-hammer evolution,and combined with that initial Germanic affinity with Fe was a very powerful,long-term even,that probably(definitely,i'd say)became very much a part of all things we think when we say "axe".

Were you were to go to any box-store,and look for a maker's mark on some of manure-forks and such-like implements,it's still very common that you'll read a "Austria" or "Switzerland":)
An atavism...
 
Anyway, all flippancy aside, it simply is the case that before saws were available plenty good woodworking was going on. Even when some form of saw was at hand I suspect many probably took a dim view and kept getting it done regardless. I don't know to what extent if any saws were used in making the stave churches but most if not all the components are cleft, cut to length, dimensioned and surfaced with axes, from the shingles, rafters, floor-boards even the door planks. And in that case you had to know your business. Jake also makes the implication that cleft material was for a long time simply a necessity in building a competent boat, something also the old Scandinavians knew so well. So the work was getting done, and done well without saws or the mind-set that technology brought.

It'd be a good question to answer whether the windmill preceded water power mill, my guess is the former but the necessary component for sawing was the invention of the crankshaft by Cornelis Corneliszoon middle of the 16th cent.to convert the rotary motion into a back and forth motion and it accounts for my difficulty in finding much hewed work around here because in the Netherlands the axe got abandoned early on in favor of machine production.
 
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Ernest DuBois said:
Anyway, all flippancy aside, it simply is the case that before saws were available plenty good woodworking was going on. Even when some form of saw was at hand I suspect many probably took a dim view and kept getting it done regardless. I don't know to what extent if any saws were used in making the stave churches but most if not all the components are cleft, cut to length, dimensioned and surfaced with axes, from the shingles, rafters, floor-boards even the door planks. And in that case you had to know your business. Jake also makes the implication that cleft material was for a long time simply a necessity in building a competent boat, something also the old Scandinavians new well. So the work was getting done, and done well without saws or the mind-set that technology brought.

It'd be a good question to answer whether the windmill preceded water power mill, my guess is the former but the necessary component for sawing was the invention of the crankshaft by Cornelis Corneliszoon middle of the 16th cent.to convert the rotary motion into a back and forth motion and it accounts for my difficulty in finding much hewed work around here because in the Netherlands the axe got abandoned early on i favor of machine production.
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Thank you Ernest! Until reading this post I had no knowledge of who invented the crankshaft, an idea that changed the world in so many ways. More proof of the continuing education made available here on the Axe, Tomahawk & Hachet Forum!
 
Continuing on in related work the need for some oak paneling came up, suitable for that half trunk that I'd had out back for a few years, (longer than's actually good, if I'm up front about it) so it got riven in the usual way and then just before carrying it into the workshop I trimmed off the old edges with a trusty axe, having gotten a bit bug-eaten and dusty there.
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Slowly, with a combination of hand powered tools, (an axe or two etc...), and good reliable heavy machinery I am working on converting my stack of riven stock into boards and it seems the ray patterns only get more mind-blowing. It really is neat stuff this oak, Quercus robur (European oak) more or less the equivalent to the NA white oak version though that wood possessing a deadly lack of character.;)
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So it came in, and so it goes out
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It goes out to dry because I'm pretty sure if left inside the workshop It'd get mold on the surface.
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Stacked out in the wood-shed - now the fire wood's all gone from there - and stickered like that inside moisture coming to the surface gets blown away.
As another measure of protection the end grain gets sealed with glue
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I mean I can't imagine wood more worth the proper care.
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Well, even though I didn't show it there was a lot of axe work, by choice, involved, even more than I'd anticipated, and mostly with that carpentry axe shown.
 
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