A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1323 entries
froe
A froe is a tool for splitting wood along the grain. It is a heavy blade set at a right angle to a wooden handle, driven into the end grain of a log with a mallet and then levered sideways to run the split down the piece. Because it follows the grain instead of cutting across it, the resulting board keeps the full length of the wood fibers, which is why a split shingle sheds water and outlasts a sawn one.
Etymology
The word is usually explained as a shortening of froward, an old English word meaning turned away, because the blade is set away from the handle rather than in line with it. The tool is also called a frower, a rive knife, or a shake axe. Rive, meaning to split, is the same word behind riven, and a froe is the definitive riving tool.
Notes
A froe makes shakes, clapboard, barrel staves, chair parts, and basket splints, and it is the tool at the center of green woodworking, which works wood while it is still wet and easy to split. The froe does not cut; it opens a crack and steers it, and the craft is in reading the grain and correcting a split that has begun to run out of the piece.