Wood splitting

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Splitting or riving a log Merlin usteye bokion.jpg
Splitting or riving a log
Bucking, splitting and stacking logs for firewood in Kõrvemaa, Estonia (October 2022)

Wood splitting (riving, [1] cleaving) is an ancient technique used in carpentry to make lumber for making wooden objects, some basket weaving, and to make firewood. Unlike wood sawing, the wood is split along the grain using tools such as a hammer and wedges, splitting maul, cleaving axe, side knife, or froe.

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Woodworking

In woodworking carpenters use a wooden siding which gets its name, clapboard, [2] from originally being split from logs—the sound of the plank against the log being a clap. This is used in clapboard architecture and for wainscoting. Coopers use oak clapboards to make barrel staves. [1] Split-rail fences are made with split wood.

Basket making

Some Native Americans traditionally make baskets from black ash by pounding the wood with a mallet and pulling long strips from the log.

Firewood

Log splitting is the act of splitting firewood from logs that have been pre-cut into sections (rounds, bolts, billets [3] ). This can be done by hand, using an axe or maul, or by using a mechanical log splitter. [4] When splitting a log by hand, it is best to aim for the cracks (called checks), if there are any visible. [5] Some types of wood are harder to split than others, including extremely hard woods, as well as types like gum which an axe will often bounce off of, and cherry, which is typically so twisted it's near impossible to get a clean split, and elm. Any type of wood, being thick or tall, having large knots or twisted grain can make it difficult to split. In some cases, it is easiest to aim for the edges and split the log into multiple pieces. Batoning is splitting small pieces of wood for kindling or other purposes sometimes with a batoning chisel, a special chisel with one sharp side used for splitting.

Advantages

The advantages of splitting wood along its grain, rather than sawing it is that the wood is much stronger. Due to this, it was historically used for building ships (e.g. drekars) and traditional skis. [6] A defining feature of shakes, which are like shingles, is that they are split rather than sawn and because the cell structure of the wood remains intact may be more durable, and similarly trunnels when split are stronger than when sawn.

Prevention

Sometimes wood splitting is undesirable. Methods to prevent splitting in woodworking are the butterfly joint, truss connector plates, or metal straps. Columns may be hollowed in the center to prevent splitting. Nail points may be blunted or pilot holes drilled to prevent splitting of lumber while nailing or screwing. End grain sealers are liquid products usually containing wax which helps prevent rapid drying of the ends of lumber resulting in splits. Metal end plates or S-shaped pieces of metal may be driven into the butt ends of a timber. Splitting is the primary reason building codes do not allow notching in the bottom of joists and beams.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lumber</span> Wood that has been processed into beams and planks

Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes, including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing. Lumber has many uses beyond home building. Lumber is sometimes referred to as timber in England, Australia, and New Zealand, while in most parts of the world the term timber refers specifically to unprocessed wood fiber, such as cut logs or standing trees that have yet to be cut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Circular saw</span> Power tool

A circular saw is a power-saw using a toothed or abrasive disc or blade to cut different materials using a rotary motion spinning around an arbor. A hole saw and ring saw also use a rotary motion but are different from a circular saw. Circular saws may also be loosely used for the blade itself. Circular saws were invented in the late 18th century and were in common use in sawmills in the United States by the middle of the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joinery</span> Where pieces of wood are fixed together in an assembly

Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining pieces of wood, engineered lumber, or synthetic substitutes, to produce more complex items. Some woodworking joints employ mechanical fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, while others use only wood elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hewing</span> Method for converting a log into lumber

In woodworking, hewing is the process of converting a log from its rounded natural form into lumber (timber) with more or less flat surfaces using primarily an axe. It is an ancient method, and before the advent of the industrial-era type of sawmills, it was a standard way of squaring up wooden beams for timber framing. Today it is still used occasionally for that purpose by anyone who has logs, needs beams, and cannot or would prefer not to pay for finished lumber. Thus, homesteaders on frugal budgets, for example, may hew their own lumber rather than buy it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rip cut</span>

In woodworking, a rip-cut is a type of cut that severs or divides a piece of wood parallel to the grain. The other typical type of cut is a cross-cut, a cut perpendicular to the grain. Unlike cross-cutting, which shears the wood fibers, a rip saw works more like a series of chisels, lifting off small splinters of wood. The nature of the wood grain requires the shape of the saw teeth to be different thus the need for both rip saws and crosscut saws; however some circular saw blades are combination blades and can make both types of cuts. A rip cut is the fundamental type of cut made at a sawmill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Splitting maul</span> Heavy, long-handled axe for splitting wood

A splitting maul also known as a block buster, block splitter, chop and maul, sledge axe, go-devil or hamaxe is a heavy, long-handled axe used for splitting a piece of wood along its grain. One side of its head is like a sledgehammer, and the other side is like an axe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firewood</span> Wood used for fires

Firewood is any wooden material that is gathered and used for fuel. Generally, firewood is not heavily processed and is in some sort of recognizable log or branch form, compared to other forms of wood fuel like pellets. Firewood can be seasoned and heat treated (dry) or unseasoned (fresh/wet). It is generally classified as either hardwood or softwood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Froe</span> Tool for cleaving wood

A froe, shake axe or paling knife is a tool for cleaving wood by splitting it along the grain. It is an L-shaped tool, used by hammering one edge of its blade into the end of a piece of wood in the direction of the grain, then twisting the blade in the wood by rotating the haft (handle).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clapboard</span> Building siding of horizontal boards

Clapboard, also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping.

A wedge is a triangular shaped tool, a portable inclined plane, and one of the six simple machines. It can be used to separate two objects or portions of an object, lift up an object, or hold an object in place. It functions by converting a force applied to its blunt end into forces perpendicular (normal) to its inclined surfaces. The mechanical advantage of a wedge is given by the ratio of the length of its slope to its width. Although a short wedge with a wide angle may do a job faster, it requires more force than a long wedge with a narrow angle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bucksaw</span> Hand-powered frame saw

A bucksaw is a hand-powered frame saw similar to bow saw and generally used with a sawbuck to cut logs or firewood to length (bucking). Modern bucksaws usually have a metal frame and a removable blade with coarse teeth held in tension by the frame. Lightweight portable or foldable models used for camping or back-packing are also available. It is often referred to as a bow saw in the North American hardware market, but that term traditionally refers to a different type of saw with a wooden frame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wood shingle</span> Tapered pieces to cover building roofs and walls

Wood shingles are thin, tapered pieces of wood primarily used to cover roofs and walls of buildings to protect them from the weather. Historically shingles, also known as shakes, were split from straight grained, knot free bolts of wood. Today shingles are mostly made by being cut which distinguishes them from shakes, which are made by being split out of a bolt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wood grain</span> Alignment and texture of the fibres in wood

Wood grain is the longitudinal arrangement of wood fibers or the pattern resulting from such an arrangement. It has various derived terms refer to different aspects of the fibers or patterns. Wood grain is important in woodworking and it impacts aesthetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Log bucking</span> Process of cutting a felled and delimbed tree into logs

Bucking is the process of cutting a felled and delimbed tree into logs. Significant value can be lost by sub-optimal bucking because logs destined for plywood, lumber, and pulp each have their own value and specifications for length, diameter, and defects. Cutting from the top down is overbucking and from the bottom up is underbucking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quarter sawing</span> Woodworking process

Quarter sawing or quartersawing is a woodworking process that produces quarter-sawn or quarter-cut boards in the rip cutting of logs into lumber. The resulting lumber can also be called radially-sawn or simply quartered. There is widespread confusion between the terms rift sawn and quarter sawn with the terms defined both with opposite meanings and as synonyms.

This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Axe</span> Type of wedge tool

An axe is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split, and cut wood, to harvest timber, as a weapon, and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol. The axe has many forms and specialised uses but generally consists of an axe head with a handle, also called a haft or a helve.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cleaving axe</span>

A cleaving axe or cleaver is a form of axe used within green woodworking to split wood lengthways. Cleaving (riving) is used to turn a log into lumber or billets into firewood. Splitting axe is sometimes described as an old name for a splitting maul or froe.

Rift sawing is a woodworking process that aims to produce lumber that is less vulnerable to distortion than flat-sawn lumber. Rift-sawing may be done strictly along a log's radials—perpendicular to the annular growth ring orientation or wood grain—or as part of the quarter sawing process.

References

  1. 1 2 "Riving" def. 1.b. Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009
  2. "Clapboard" def. 1., 2., and 3. Whitney, William Dwight, and Benjamin E. Smith. The Century dictionary and cyclopedia. vol. 2. New York: Century Co., 1901. 1027. Print.
  3. "billet, n 2. 1 a." Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 2009 CD-rom
  4. "How to Split Wood by Hand: [Using Wood Splitting Tools] ?".
  5. Brett and Kate McKay (25 November 2009). "How to Split Firewood Correctly". The Art of Manliness. Retrieved 2014-02-11.
  6. Happy People: A year in the Taiga,