Making Some Hand Hewn Beams

We have a nice supply of Red Maple on the farm. It is a wood that we use for firewood, but it has a wide variety of uses. I just talked to a fellow who has a logging company, and he told me that soft maple is now in demand for kitchen cabinets, because everyone wants painted cabinets, so cherry is out; we burn that too.

Anyway my son Michael, who does most of the work with the cattle, and is also our woodsman, went out into the woods today and started working on some beams. He uses all hand tools. He buys them at flea markets, local auctions, and he sometimes buys the heads of hatchets and axes from ebay. He makes a lot of the handles for his refurbishing of  the tools from the wood on the farm. He keeps his tools extremely sharp.

Some of Michaels Tools in the Mud Room

He cut down some maple trees in the woods behind our house and cut them into two 9 foot logs. He then used a chalk line to mark off where he wanted to square each side so that he would end up with a 6 x 6 x 9 beam.

He cuts the bark on the side he is going to square into rectangles using his buck saw. He then uses his adze to cut out the sides and each section as he squares a side.

He uses a draw knife to finish and smooth it out after using the adze. The draw knife is by the teeth of the buck saw in the picture below. I took this when he was using the adze, and the knife is a bit hard to see, but it is a blade with handles on each end. You pull it toward you when cutting.

Buck Saw with Draw Knife on  Right

Doing this might seem like it isn't too difficult, but it is a lot of work to make your own beams. He worked for hours out in the cold today. It was about 8 degrees fahrenheit on the mountain.

He worked on them, and got them done. They aren't perfectly square, but they're pretty close, and now he has two nice 9 foot beams for his next project, which I believe is a building for the pigs he wants to get this spring.