Hand Hewing Ash Planks with an Axe for an Anglo-Saxon Shield - Part II | Early Medieval Woodworking

The Anglo-Saxons hewed planks from logs for many uses, from buildings to shield-making. Here I hew planks from cleaved sections of an ash log. I will use these planks to make an Anglo-Saxon shield. There is no evidence for large saws used in woodworking during the Anglo-Saxon period. Logs would have been cleaved or split into sections, and these sections would be hewn into planks with axes. The earliest evidence for the use of T-shaped axes in Anglo-Saxon woodworking is found in the form of tool marks on timbers from the Ebbsfleet Saxon Watermill in Kent, dated to 692 A.D. However, there are finds of smaller T-shaped axe-hammers in weapon burials dating earlier to the 6th century, including at Buckland Dover, Sarre and Tuddenham. This axe, as the originals, was forged with a wrought iron body and steel bit and weighs roughly 800 grams, placing it in between the earlier war T-axes and later woodworking T-axes in size. After splitting the log down to eighth-sections, the cleaved sect