Felling Curvy Elm Trees and Hewing a Medieval Beam | Life on an Anglo-Saxon Farmstead in Autumn скачать в хорошем качестве

Felling Curvy Elm Trees and Hewing a Medieval Beam | Life on an Anglo-Saxon Farmstead in Autumn

As winter draws in and the autumn gets colder, I look to fell a number of standing dead Elm trees near my house. The trees have been dead several years, but have remained standing and dry with the only bug damage being on the surface. The interior wood is beautifully solid. After clearing the area and felling a few smaller stems which will make small or curved beams, I began to fell the largest trunk of the stand. While felling and processing the timber, I also attended to the winter planting and preparation of the vegetable beds. The lower bed which had previous been my fallow bed, with vegetables saved for seed; I turned to soil, added leftover ash and charcoal for nutrients and water retention and planted winter beans, which will restore some fertility and give an early harvest next summer. The middle bed which this summer was my productive vegetable bed, will be left fallow, with the remaining root vegetables left to turn to seed this summer, providing with a supply of seeds for the following planting season. The upper bed which this summer was my pea crop, I covered over with hay to mulch the earth and keep the weeds down before planting my productive vegetable seeds into it this summer. These beds will rotate between these three planting plans as part of a miniature ‘three-field system’ based on the Medieval model. My two cats, Romulus and Remus, were also outside for the first time since I took them in as kittens. Romulus was very bold, instantly stepping out to explore, but always keeping very close to the house and never straying more than a few paces away. Remus was more nervous, and spend the first week only stepping out into the porch to observe and smell the new world! As they grew bolder, Romulus started being comfortable adventuring out past the hedge which defines the compound around my house, and spent his time hanging out with me as I worked, as he is very affectionate. Remus, once confident, began to disappear during the day on his secret excursions, known only to him, but he would always return in the evening for food, to sleep on my bed during the night, and warm up by the fire. He is clearly hunting while out and about and he even dragged home a pheasant which he somehow managed to kill or find! One the elm trunk was felled, I limbed it and bucked it to length; just over two paces. The log was far too heavy to move, so I began to process it in situ, as Early Medieval people likely did when harvesting timber for beams and planks, before hauling the near-finished and much lighter timber out of the forest. I squared the log rough roughly by eye, by cutting notched into the surfaces and splitting and hewing these off to a flat surface. Once I had two sides flat, it was easier to mark a straight line along the log with a string line to mark out the other two faces. Elm has an interlocking grain and this particularly curvy tree was quite challenging to hew, as the grain constantly shifted direction, meaning I had to change cutting angles several times over just a couple of feet and between the upper and lower edges of the face. Despite this, Elm was valued by Early Medieval carpenters for its strength and its beautiful wavy grain produced by the interlocking structure. After Oak, Elm was the most common timber used for beams in Medieval timber framed houses, and it often survives to this day in houses dating back to the Medieval period. Once the timber was light enough to move, I shifted it to my carpentry area just in front of the location for my granary timber frame. The elm beam will form one of several uprights in this timber frame. After rough hewing, the beam was roughly square, and could have been used in its rough form. However it was still oversize and too heavy to easily maneuver into position. It also still had the remains of the notches initially cut into each face. Going for a more refined finish, I finished each face of the beam with my T-shaped finishing axe, using a string-line and charcoal to get each edge straight, and a plumb line to keep each face level. When hewing, I use a plumb line on the first foot of the face and then match the rest of the face by eye; sighting along the timber as I work it to make sure the face is straight, plumb and in line with the end. The beam is now ready to start framing into the oak sill beams, although I will hew the rest of the upright posts first. I will try to get all of these from the standing dead elm trees which line the hedgerows of my house. With thanks to: Herknungr, Musician, playing "Spekð" If you would like to support me further, you can become a patron here:   / gesithasgewissa   Join this channel to become a member:    / @gesithasgewissa   Or make a one-off donation: https://paypal.me/gesithasgewissa   / gesithasgewissa     / gesithasgewissa