Splitting, or riving, wood in early days was a skill
practiced by craftsmen who made boards, shingles,
clapboards, fences, basket splints, chair parts,
wagon spokes, lath, and more. Our ancestors used axes,
gluts or wedges, froes, drawknives and spelk planes for
splitting wood.
     The froe was designed for splitting. It is typically an
L-shaped tool made up of a wedge-shaped blade with a
dull, but not blunt, knife edge and a wood handle. Blades
were usually straight with a socket forged at one end, but
curved blades were also made. Most handles were round
and tapered, and were inserted up through this socket. But
some froes had eyes similar to those on axes for handles
that were wedged. The froe handle is held in an upright
position in one hand while the other hand drives the top of
the blade downward with a wood froe club or mallet.
After a split is started, the froe is wiggled downward to
lengthen it until the split is complete. Most old froes were
hand forged, but they were also available in many
catalogs. The 1873 D.R. Barton catalog offered straight
froes at 12 1/2 cents per inch. You can still buy a new
froe from Woodcraft for $50. I couldn't find a curved froe
in any catalog.
     The following from Alex Bealer's “The Tools That
Built America” takes us back in time, "Probably the first
real organized industry in the first colony of the British
Empire, Virginia, was the splitting of clapboards to be
exported to England. ... With no sawmills established at
Jamestown, splitting was the only suitable method for
making small boards." (The first sawmill in Jamestown
was burned to the ground by sawyers, which was the fate
of many early sawmills in England.) Even after sawmills
obviated the need to split wood, which came earlier in
New England where sawmills were in use early on to
support the thriving timber export trade, wood continued
to be split by hand by those who did not have access to
sawmills or believed split wood to be superior for certain
uses. For example, we know that rived wagon wheel
spokes are stronger than sawn ones. And sometime,
splitting can be faster than sawing. Bealer does not
believe any clapboards were split after 1850.
    Much detail on splitting wood is contained in another
Alex Bealer book "Old Ways Of Working Wood", one of
my favorites. For example, cedar is the most ideal wood
to split because it is amenable to splitting almost any way.
Thus, a 24" cedar log can be squared with a froe and then
easily be split into shingles. An oak, pine, or chestnut log,
on the other hand, must first be split by axes or wedges
into billets (quarters for smaller logs or triangular radial
sections for larger ones). For oak the useless sapwood and
the pith of the heartwood is discarded; for pine and
chestnut only the bark is removed. Oak billets can then be
 split radially with a froe which produces boards that are
wider on one edge. Thus, oak was the principal wood used
for clapboards. Bealer says that pine and chestnut billets
must be split tangentially to the annual rings which
produces boards of even thickness that will not split when
nailed. Herb Kean has demonstrated for me that oak
boards can be rived out either radially or tangentially.
     Examples of the most common froe, the straight froe
with round wood handle, are shown in figure 1. Froe
blades were both longer and shorter than those pictured,
from 3" for the basketmaker's froe up to 24" for the
shinglemaker's froe. Froes with blades 8"-12" long are
commonly called "cooper's froes", but their use by coopers
is probably exaggerated. More likely, barrel stave blanks
made in the woods to be traded to the local cooper may
have been riven out with froes. But, it's unlikely that the
cooper would have used a froe for any further preparation
of barrel staves.
    Figures 2 and 3 show a variety of curved froes,
including the one in the center of Figure 2 that I was
prepared to call left-handed. But actually either curve
could be held in either hand; therefore, I'll just mention
that froes can have different curves. What you'll hear
about curved froes is that they were used by coopers to
rive out curved barrel staves. Curved froes may have been
used to rive out short staves for shallow sap buckets, tubs
or pails, or even kegs, but not barrel staves. Bill Rigler,
who lives in Tennessee's cedar country, has split cedar
with a curved froe and tells me that curved staves come
out smooth on both sides, and for runs up to about 18".
But for other woods, I quote Edwin Tunis from his book
Colonial Craftsmen. "[I] doubt that a curved froe will do
what is hoped for it. Wood has its own ideas about how
it will be split." Herb Kean tried to make some one foot
curved staves from reasonably straight-grained oak. What
resulted were staves that were curved on both sides at the
very top of the split, but, as Tunis had warned, the curves
soon gave way to the grain, and the bottoms were mostly
without any trace of curvature.
    Figure 4 shows three all-iron curved froes with
straight handles.  One similar to the bottom froe is
pictured in The Chronicle (44:2:54) with the suggestion
that it's a cooper's froe.
    Figure 5 shows two froes with axe-eye sockets.
Figure 6 is another axe-eye froe, but this one has a knife
edge on the end of the blade. It's a lathmaker's froe from
this November's Brown auction.    The name is
corroborated by Salaman. I couldn't find an explanation
of how the edge at the end of the froe was used. If you
know, please write.
    Figure 7 shows three knife froes. The one with the
wood handle is the only froe in my collection with a
maker's mark. It was made by the Underbill Edge Tool Co.
of Nashua, New Hampshire, and thus dates to 1852-90.
    And finally, the most unusual froe has eluded me. I
have never seen the double-handled froe whose straight
blade has a socket at each end for handles. This froe is
pictured in the Crane catalog of August 1983 (it sold for
$85) and also in Bud Steere's Catalog No. 29 dated
December 1983 (priced at $110). Do you think Bud
bought it in August and sold it in December? Or maybe
he had more than one! Anyway this froe is at the top of
my most wanted list.
    Special thanks to Herb Kean and Bill Rigler for their
help with this article.