The Foxfire series of books from the 1970s and '80s contain interviews of old-timers who remember how things were done in the early 1900s and Great Depression. In
Foxfire 10, there is a section about hewing cross ties for the railroad. The cross ties were 8'-6" long and typically 7" by 9", and were sold for about 50 cents each.
Some quotes from the book:
Dan Crane: "A lot of people hewed. They had to. That's the only way they had to make a few dollars to buy groceries with... The cross ties were made out of white oak, red oak, and all different kinds of oak for a long time. After several years, we started hewing them out of pine, too. After they creosoted the heart pine, they would last a pretty good while. And a lot of times, we would get trees that would have three or four cross ties in them. The hewed cross ties came from the heart of the tree, and they would last longer than the sawed ones that were cut out of any part of the tree, so the railroad would pay more for a hewed one than a sawed one..."
"And all we ever used to hew with was a three-and-a-half pound Sager double-bitted axe. We never used a broadax."
"We'd hew the cross ties mostly in the fall of the year after the sap went down..."
"My daddy could hew ten a day. Eight was a good, easy day's work. He'd hew ten a lot of times. I could hew six or seven myself, and I was just a boy then sixteen or seventeen years old."
Dan Crane showed the writers of the book how to hew a cross tie. There's a photo of him hewing a log using a double bit axe. Here's a link showing another photo of him holding up the finished cross tie that he hewed for the demonstration:
http://books.google.com/books?id=l7E9SysL_OkC&lpg=PA29&dq=foxfire%20hewing&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q=foxfire%20hewing&f=false
By the way, these Foxfire books tend to have a lot of good information and stories about life in Southern Appalachia when people were more self-reliant. Foxfire 5 was an interesting read, with chapters covering Ironmaking, Blacksmithing, Flintlock Rifles, and Bear Hunting.
