Making Log Dogs, on My Blog.

While hewing the beams, I quickly found that the log likes to roll around quite a bit while being trimmed. This makes obtaining a square, straight edge very difficult, if not impossible. The answer, of course, is a log dog. A log dog holds the log in whatever orientation you set it in, and is effectively a big staple like clamp for the log. I needed some, so I made some with scrap I had lying around.



Started with two railroad spike and a 16" length of old plumbing steel.

Sharpened the spikes to a point, this was a mistake.

Before and after, the point is so slimming!

All welded up and almost ready to go.

I didn't like the relative angles on two of the spikes, so I heated one red hot with my torch and bent it till it was parallel with the other. Much better.


After making two of these log dogs, and trying them out, I realized that I should have made chisel point on them instead of sharpened square points. The pros make chisel points offset at 90 degrees to one another. I suppose I'll regrind them when I'm ready to start chopping again!

 

Some hewing progress

I found myself with some rare truly free time, so I went ahead and gave hand hewing a try. Blisters and a sore back brought only one half hewn side for a vertical support beam, but I learned a lot even in that short time. This gave me a heightened level of amazement at our ancestors and their level of skill at this. The existing hand hewn beams in the barn are BEAUTIFUL, dead straight, and massive. I am sure that I couldn't get anywhere close to that level of perfection without YEARS of practice, so I will keep my efforts small and slow.