Form (Timberbee)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Form

• Form. If you are only interested in Hewing a few timbers, this discussion will not be terribly important to you. Good form is counter intuitive, it's Tough on the body, and, when you first start, it shortens the amount of time you can stand there swinging a Broad Axe. In fact, that’s the reason for a discussion in the first place; it's hard to stay in it.

Proper form is where, when using the Broad Axe, Everything comes from the shoulder. This really can't be overstressed. What this means is that your back is straight, you are looking forward, if you are right handed, then your left leg is back (Trailing Leg) possibly touching the log, your Right leg (Lead Leg) is a good bit forward, both legs slightly bent.
This should be a good, solid, comfortable stance. For me this means that from trailing legs heel to Lead legs toe is about 2', more or less.

While your Trailing leg is up against the log, your Lead leg is about a forearm's length from the log.
And now the arms.
As I said before, everything is coming from the shoulder. To try and get a picture of this, put your arms in the form of an L. Pretend you are jog. As a matter of fact, jog in place for a moment. If you are like most people, that back and forth motion that your arms are making is All coming from your shoulders. Your wrist isn't bending, your elbow isn't flexing.
Now just stand in place, for a moment, and swing both your arms at the same time, make the left and right go back at the same moment, not one at a time, as if you were still jogging, but, both together in one motion.

Now, You are almost hewing.
To complete the motion, grab a stick, something light, the tube from a package of wrapping paper would be best, a wiffle bat, heck, even a wooden spoon, what the hey. Grab the object and separate your hands by about 8" or so (The distance between outstretched pinky and outstretched thumb). The distance between your hands doesn't matter so much for now, we just don't want to great a separation at this time, later this distance will be determined by what you are Actually trying to do with the Axe. And you will be the final judge of that.

Ok, so you've got this thing, alright, now, raise your hands up so that your lead hand is about at eye level, and then just drop them until your lead hand pretty much hits your belly. Now just do that again, get it into that jogging pace.
Notice that your elbows aren't flexing, and your wrists aren't breaking.
What you want to watch for here is that your trailing arms elbow is tight to the body, your arm is making a fairly decent sound, going back and forth, your lead arms Forearm is impacting your belly Slightly.

Ok, that's going well, yes.
Now go stand alongside a wall, if you aren't already, get in your stance, and repeat this motion.
What you are looking for is that your Trailing arm's forearm is pretty much parallel to the wall, in fact, it should almost be touching it. But the stick is going Away from the wall at a slight angle. If this were an axe, you'd be cutting air. That's where the actual geometetry of your Broad Axe Handle comes in, it's bent. This allows you to get your Lead hand in a bit closer to the log without losing your knuckles.

• Knuckles; In the beginning, there is no way around losing skin off of the knuckles on your Lead hand. If it’s not happening to you, then you're either very lucky, very much a natural at this, or doing something Very, very wrong, cause, for most folks it just happens, and that’s all there is to it.
  It’s funny, it doesn't seem to hurt terribly much, though it looks like it should, all that ragged skin hanging down. You look like a darn Live oak all covered with Spanish moss. What often hurts most is trying to bite off those loose scraps of skin.

The Good news is, at some point you're just not going to be hitting with your knuckles, it just happens, no conscious effort involved. For most people, after a bit, they just don't care if they hit their knuckles or not, it just doesn't happen anymore.

• Machismo, and Masochism. Looking back at the above statement, some damn fool is going to be grinning, and someone else is going to be shaking their head. Hewing is just darn physically taxing, but it's not about who is the bigger "Man" than the next. It's true that there is often a certain amount of suffering involved -- this is a craft, after all -- but one needs to have control. You can suffer all you want, leave blood and guts all over your timber, showing the tremendous extent to which you've been suffering, Pain in every limb, Heck, you can't even walk when the day is done. But, If that timber is a piece of crap, all your suffering is in vain. And if you are in no shape to work the next day... Well, that ain't no good either.
  You are certainly looking to push yourself, that is how you build endurance and strength, but you have to keep in mind what it is that you striving to achieve. Your suffering doesn't matter to anyone but you. What matters is whether or not what your timber is square, free of twist, attractive (Relative), and Hewn in a timely manner.

• A Quick Story. A number of years ago, my Brother was hired to help me hew. Here he was, a Library Science major, and he was going to be spending the whole, darn, summer swinging an axe. Boy, you’d look at him and you’d say; this has gotta be the first time he ever used one, certainly the first time swinging one all darn day, 5 days a week, but, you know, He did pretty darn good, he had spirit, and that’s what you need. Spirit and commitment.

I had him scoring, but not to the line, mind you, just removing excess waste. It provided him with the opportunity to work on accuracy, endurance, strength and coordination, all good things.
In about a week, or so, seems like it should have been a whole lot less, and maybe it was, when there we were, about to pack up for the day, when I noticed all this blood on the handle of his handle. There weren’t no cause for it. He wasn't in contact with the log, shouldn’t a been anyway, and the tops of his hands seemed fine, shit. I grabbed his wrist, opened that palm, knowing exactly what I'd find. Hamburger, and sure enough, that’s what it was.
When I demanded an explanation, he just looked at me kind of confused, like he wasn’t sure why I was even askin, and he said,
"I just asked myself, 'what would Tim, do?' so I kept working."
At this point I turned my own palm over and showed him a couple of red spots on my pads.
"See this?" I asked, "That's a Hotspot, that's why we're packing it up.
Damn, he just stood there, looking more confused than ever. Then, he looked down, opened up his hands again, and just stared, long and hard.
I got to hand it to him, he didn’t whoop my ass that night, and, better still, he was back to work the next day, just on lighter duty.
Hot spots crust over, when give em a night’s rest, that’s how you make some damn good calluses. But torn skin, that’s gotta heal, and you don’t get a damn thing out of that, unless you were looking for a reason to skip work.

It's not about Masochism, and it’s not about comparing yourself to someone else. Instead of asking, “What would Tim do?”, my brother should have paying attention to himself, and asking, “What the hell is Dan doing putting up with this shit ass brother?”.

I’ve been hurt a lot in this job. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to avoid it, and sometimes you even have to work through an injury, but, if you can catch an injury before it happens, and maybe quit a bit early, take a break, you'll be so much better off in the long run. It’s a heck of a lot better to call it quits for a day rather than spending the next week, or month, year, heck maybe even the rest of your life recovering.