flat
surface level. The expert axeman will do this by what he calls
"sensiation." It might be well to say here that if you select for
puncheons wood with a straight grain and wood that will split easily you
will simplify your task, but even mean, stubborn wood may be flattened by
scoring and hewing. Quoting from Horace Kephart's excellent book on
woodcraft, an experienced man can tell a straight-grained log "by merely
scanning the bark"; if the ridges and furrows of the bark run straight up
and down the wood will have a corresponding straight grain, but if they
are spiral the wood will split "waney" or not at all. "Waney" is a good
word, almost as good as "sensiation"; so when you try to quarter a log
with which to chink your cabin or log house don't select a "waney" log. To
quarter a log split it as shown in Fig. 119 and split it along the dotted
lines shown in the end view of Fig. 126.

In the Maine woods the woodsmen are adepts in making shakes, splits,
clapboards, or shingles by the use of only an axe and splitting them out
of the billets of wood from four to six feet long. The core of the log
(Fig. 130) is first cut out and then the pieces are split out, having
wedge-shaped edges, as shown by the lines marked on Fig. 127. They also
split out boards after the manner shown by Fig. 128. In making either the
boards or the shakes, if it is found that the wood splinters down into the
body of the log too far or into the board or shake too far, you must
commence at the other end of the billet or log and split it up to meet the
first split, or take hold of the split or board with your hands and deftly
tear it from the log, an art which only experience can teach. I have seen
two-story houses composed of nothing but a framework with sides and roof
shingled over with these splits. In the West they call these "shake"
cabins.

It may be wise before we close this axeman's talk to caution the reader
against chopping firewood by resting one end of the stick to be cut on a
log and the other end on the ground, as shown in Fig. 131, and then
striking this stick a sharp blow with the axe in the middle. The effect of
this often is to send the broken piece or fragment gyrating through the
air, as is shown by the dotted lines, and many a woodchopper has lost an
eye from a blow inflicted by one of these flying pieces; indeed, I have
had some of my friends meet with this serious and painful accident from
the same cause, and I have seen men