An Incredible Tool for Splitting Kindling

I just finished making what is known as a kindling splitter today, and oh my goodness is this a freaking amazing tool! Anyone out there who has a wood burner or uses kindling should probably think seriously about acquiring one. It makes the tedious, dangerous job of splitting wood into smaller sized “kindling” pieces quick, easy, and MUCH safer.

(Please note some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. What this means is that should you click through them and make a qualifying purchase I will receive a commission which I’d certainly appreciate since it helps support this blog project. However, this shouldn’t increase your cost any, and certainly don’t ever feel like I’m pressuring you to buy things through the links I offer or anywhere else. I’m all about being frugal first!)

I wrote about my rocket mass heater in a previous post. One of the complaints you might hear about having one is that it is a lot of work to split the wood into smaller pieces than a normal wood stove uses. We do this because it works much better, burning hotter if the wood is smaller. (As a side note I should point out that since these heaters use 50 to 90 percent less wood than a traditional wood stove you would still be splitting less wood overall.) The kindling splitter is a fabulous companion tool to have with a rocket mass heater! It makes the task of wood splitting so much easier and safer.

In this post today I thought I would run through a series of photos I took while making my kindling splitter , offering it up as a bit of a tutorial to guide others who want to try building one of their own. As with my previous post on copper tongs, part of the reason I’m doing it is to offer it up for potential use in the metalworking badge for the PEP program Paul Wheaton is developing over at permies.com. I find this program intriguing both for the material it aims to teach, but also because it is an organically developing example of the sort of potentially free education with individual accreditation I was writing about in my post on changes I see coming in education.

As a result of this potential use I’m trying to keep the tools needed fairly basic and readily available, rather than highly specialized stuff that might work better. Though in this case, since I don’t do much work with ferrous metals, most of my equipment is just that basic sort of stuff anyway.

Before I start into how I made my own I feel like I should note that if I was really doing a cost benefit analysis looking at what I spent on materials (not much) and time (more than I’d like) making this, the cost of purchasing one premade isn’t all that bad. Over on Amazon a search for “kindling splitter” turns up several options. From what I’ve read from others who have both a smaller less expensive one, and a larger more expensive one it makes the most sense to just go ahead and buy the larger one since the increased size makes it much more useful. I understand this is a good model.

That said I’m still all about doing it yourself. In the process of creating it you develop more skills, and should anything ever break you should be able to fix it. So I don’t regret building my own, despite the fact that it’s not really a finely crafted bit of metalwork like I’m generally known for. In fact, it’s kinda ugly! The welds will win no awards for beauty either, but then in my defense it was my first time stick welding. Ok, enough opening chatter. Let’s jump into this!

So I kinda planned this out in my head and then looked at what scrap steel I had lying around. Then when I was in town one day I stopped at the salvage yard and bought the other pieces I needed. I forget what I paid now, probably around $20. This first photos shows the basic stuff I’m starting with. I’ll get to the measurements I used later. Though please keep in mind what I did is just one way to do this. Really all you need are the basics elements of this system, a splitting blade mounted upright and high enough to allow space for the logs to split out below it. Then some sort of cage several inches above the splitting blade for safety and to help guide the logs.

So to start things off I needed to cut the bar stock down to length. There are many ways one could cut steel bars. I chose to start with a cut off wheel on my 4.5 inch grinder. Ok, well it isn’t exactly a cut off wheel, or maybe it’s just a bad one. It is sort of like a thin grinding disk or a thick cut off wheel. Either way I thought it should work easily enough. Ugh! It took me way longer than I expected to cut through the .5″ x 1.75″ bar stock you see clamped down in the vise.

I was having the same issues cutting/grinding through the smaller steel bars. So being a hand tool kind of guy I decided to bust out my trusty hack saw. It has cut lots of steel rods for me in the past when I’m making chasing tools, and always seemed to go fairly fast. Low and behold it cut through this bar faster and easier than the grinding disk I had. As they say, “your mileage may vary”. Other ways to cut steel would be an actual metal band saw, a cold saw, a chop saw with the appropriate cutting disk for steel, or a plasma cutter. All those tend to be more expensive, specialized tools the average home shop doesn’t have.

For the ring or cage up around the top of tool I had a strip of steel about 4 feet long or so and about 1/8 inch thick. (I didn’t remember to measure it beforehand.) To bend this around into a rough circle I opted to use my blacksmith’s cone, because I have it and it’s a nifty tool I like to use whenever I can. 🙂 The average home shop probably doesn’t have a blacksmithing cone. That’s ok. If you had a bender that would probably be ideal. Forming it around the trunk of a tree would likely work too. I suspect that even putting it in the jaws of a vise and bending small sections at a time would work fine. For that matter, there is no reason this part needs to be round. You could bend up a square, or cut sections to be welded into a square, or rectangle, or hexagon, etc. The main point is that you NEED a cage up at the top for safety! The size of it is also going to determine you maximum log diameter.

I should note that I didn’t need to have the steel hot to bend it for this particular job. The metal was thin enough, and the overall length was long enough for me to have enough leverage to just bend it by hand, with a little bit of extra persuasion on the ends with a heavy mallet. I used a clamp to hold it together until I could weld the ends. Oh, and I also decided to overlap the ends to make things easier on me when welding. That way I didn’t need to worry about getting the two sides to butt together perfectly. The overlap also gave me a great place to clamp it.

To clean up burs and sharp edges that result from cutting the steel I used my belt sander. It made quick work of that job. I could have also used a sanding wheel on the 4.5 inch grinder, or simply a file.

Most of my steel was covered in surface rust. This isn’t uncommon with used material. In order to weld it though it does help a ton to have bare, clean metal. This allows the electricity to arc better while welding, and should help create better welds in general. So I used a sanding wheel on my grinder to quickly run over the surfaces and strip off the rust. I could also have used a wire brush attachment, which is designed just for this. I didn’t have one though.

So in this next photo you can see all the parts I’m going to use, cut to length, formed, and ready to be welded together. What I have is two sections of .5″ x 1.75″ bar cut 14″ long. When the blade, made of the same stock but only 10″ long, sits on top that will put the top splitting edge at about 16 inches in height. I chose this so I would be sure to have enough room for a standard 16″ length of wood to be hammered all the way down if it decides to be stubborn and not split nicely.

I’ve also got 4 sections of bar stock cut to 18 inches in length. I’m planning to have one of these on each side of the 14 inch bars, thus forming a slot where the blade can be inserted and removed. If I had it to do over again I think I would have made these 18 inch sections 2 to 4 inches longer. This is because my circle/cage sits on top and I feel like that would probably work better a bit higher than mine ended up. As I have it, the cage serves its most important feature of safety, preventing one from easily slamming flesh onto the upright blade. If it was a bit higher it would likely also help to hold firewood in position as you begin the split. That said, what I have has worked just fine so far. You can also see the bent ring/cage section in this photo. It is roughly 10 inches in diameter.

The big, strange gear looking thing is a wonderful bit of specialness my kindling splitter will have that probably nobody else will have. Many years ago one of my students (Thanks Ally) brought me a bunch of odd scrap steel parts that seemed like they could be handy for metal forming or something. Her husband worked at a place that tore apart semi trucks and thus had access to this sort of thing. When thinking about this project and looking around at what I had I realized this, a part of a transmission I think, would be ideal for a heavy base I could weld parts onto. My guess was that it would be heavy enough that I wouldn’t need to bolt this down to a stump to use it. It also had holes already if I found I did need to bolt it down. Based on my use of the finished tool so far it’s working just as I hoped. I haven’t found a need to bolt it down. If you don’t happen to have such a thing, don’t worry I’ll offer an alternative a bit farther on.

Oh, I also have in the photo the scrap cut off ends from the smaller bars. I figured I’d bring them along with me to potentially use as extra bracing when I welded everything together.

I don’t actually have a welder, but fortunately I have a friend who just recently bought one (thanks Dave) . In the past I’ve used both TIG and MIG welders, but I’ve never done stick welding. Naturally a stick welder is what my friend has. So for this project I was learning how to stick weld! In this photo I’ve got all the parts laid out at his place.

I decided to begin with the ring since it seemed like the easiest having thinner metal and easy to get at joints. I’m not going to get into just how to weld in this post. It’s not really my area of expertise, as you’ll know when you see the quality of the welds. Basically speaking though what happens is we run a current through the metal parts, using an electrode to form a small gap, creating an arc of electricity. That arc is VERY hot and melts the steel. A filler rod, which in this case is also the electrode, allows one to add in metal, building up areas and fusing molten sections together. So the clamp you see in the following photos will be providing one side of the electric current. The flux coated stick I’ll be welding with will form the other side of the current.

In this next photo you can see the bars I talked about earlier stacked together as I want them and clamped to hold them in place until I’ve got them welded.

Since my buddy Dave was there I had him take an action shot!

Here are the bars of the first upright section welded together. I didn’t figure I really needed a weld along the full length for this so I just did 3 sections. I’m going to repeat this for the other side.

I mentioned a bit earlier that I’d show you another option if you didn’t happen to have a big gear from a semi transmission lying around. Here is what you could do otherwise. A simple strip to weld each upright section onto, forming an upside down “T” shape. You would also need to drill holes into the base section so you could bolt it down to a stump or something. Another option might be simply one larger plate of steel to form the whole base.

Next I welded my first upright section onto the big gear I’m using for a base plate.

Here’s a close up shot to show you how ugly my welds are. As long as it holds I’m happy for this project.

In this next photo I’ve got the second upright section welded into place. The cross bar is what will eventually be ground down into my splitting blade. Right now it’s just sitting in place. I don’t plan to weld it. Instead I want it to be a removable blade for easier sharpening in the future. I brought it with me so I could make sure all the welded parts were in proper alignment and spaced correctly.

Next I set and welded the top safety ring in place. If you look on You Tube you may see some videos of other people making different variations of the kindling splitter. Some will omit this ring. You could do that, but if you choose not to have it I’d recommend designing in blood gutters or something to help with clean up for when somebodies fleshy body parts end up getting slammed down onto the exposed upright blade. Remember when you are actually using this there will likely be all sorts of tripping hazards piling up around you in the form of split wood. Not only that, but when the log you are hammering on suddenly splits it’s not uncommon for your hammer hand to suddenly fly downward toward the blade. Personally my goal with this tool is to not only make splitting kindling easier but SAFER. So I strongly recommend designing your tool with a ring or cage on top to act as a stop for body parts slamming into the blade!

I’m not sure I needed them, but since I had the parts already and the welder was handy I decided to go ahead and weld my little off cuts on as extra bracing for the upright sections. It felt plenty strong without them, but I will be hammering pretty hard on this thing.

Next I’m back at home and ready to drill my holes for mounting the splitting blade. Rather than drilling everything separate and hoping all the holes line up I chose to wait until I could drill them all together. So in this photo you see what will be the splitting bar in place with some clamps to help make sure it doesn’t shift as I drill the first holes. I then used my center punch to mark where the centers of my first holes on each side will be. This mark also serves as a point for the drill bit to catch and start in.

Once I had the first hole drilled I put the screw through it. Again this is to make sure it doesn’t shift while I drill the next hole. I should point out here too that I decided to bust out the actual corded drill to make sure I had all the power I needed. I’m drilling down through 1.5 inches of steel in order to get all the way through the 3 stacked bars. My cordless might have done it, but it might have been a pain in the butt too.

One other tip that makes drilling these sorts of holes WAY easier is to stop and lubricate the drill bit several times. I’m using my can of Tap Magic that has been serving me well in such instances for years now. It’s very obvious when I’ve just added a few drops to the hole because the metal shavings will suddenly come out in nice long ribbons rather than chopped broken bits. Drilling through this thickness of steel without the Tap Magic would have been a chore otherwise.

After the first two holes were drilled and held in place with bolts I used the center punch again to mark two more. I wanted two on each side to help prevent the blade from wiggling around while it’s being hammered on to split wood. You may notice there’s suddenly a lot of snow in this photo. Welcome to springtime in Michigan!

Here’s a close up shot of the two holes on one side, just so you can see better what I did and how I decided to space things.

My final step was grinding down the cross bar so it would become the splitting blade. To do this I decided to use my 4.5 inch grinder with a fairly aggressive grinding wheel. I mounted the blade as high as I could in a vise so I could keep two hands on the grinder as I worked the edge.

Grinding the blade was a rather long process. I decided to pull out a chair and sit down. While sitting I realized my swivel chair was actually a handy tool for this task. It allowed me to hold the grinder at a more consistent angle and just swivel back and forth in the chair to move the disk across the blade. Plus it was more comfortable. You may notice there’s not much snow on the ground now. While grinding the blade did take a while, not that much time has passed since the snowy photo earlier. Again, welcome to springtime in Michigan!

As I progressed with the grinding I realized I needed to get the blade out away from the vise more in order to make a steep enough angle on the edge. so I began clamping just one end in, doing the overhanging section, then shifting it to do the other side. I also used a file to finish the very edge.

Here’s a shot to show you the angle I eventually managed to get. This blade grinding part was a lot of work. If you can come up with a ready made blade to use it would make the construction of this tool much easier. On the other hand I do feel empowered having made the splitting blade myself. I should also note I don’t know what type of steel it is since I got it as scrap. I might be a tool steel, but I doubt it. I also haven’t hardened and tempered it. While I don’t have a ton of time using this it seems to be holding up fine. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but then I remembered that the one for sale on Amazon was made entirely of cast iron so I can’t see why this wouldn’t work as I’ve heard that one works great.

So with the blade ground down to a splitting wedge I positioned it back in place and inserted the bolts with corresponding washers and nuts. Then I tightened everything down and had a new kindling splitter to try out.

First I set it up on a large high tree stump. Trying it out though it felt too high and a bit awkward to hammer down the wood.

So I tried it on my normal splitting stump which is a bit lower. That was better and I split a fair amount of wood there quite easily. Still it seemed a bit high.

So I looked around to see what else I had and settled on a couple 8 inch high cinder blocks. That seemed to work the best. It could maybe be a bit higher, say 10 or 12 inches, but this was working great. I’ve never split wood so easily or quickly. The idea is that you set the log onto the splitting blade and hit it with a heavy hammer. Many people seem to find a 4 pound hammer to work well. I don’t know what mine weighs but it did good. It’s easy to split the wood where you want it because you are positioning it directly on the blade. You don’t get the same sort of miss swings that happen with an axe. Once it’s started, if it doesn’t just split right away, you can let go of the log and get a good two handed swing with the hammer. Wood that wants to split easily naturally still splits easy. However, I found it was working well on wood that normally fights me, such as pieces with twisted grain, or knots. I was even able to split a log right through a branching “Y” shaped section! Naturally some pieces require heavier hammering than others, but overall it was a dream tool for splitting wood, esp. when I wanted to reduce it down to smaller pieces. There is just so much more control setting it on the blade and hitting the end with a hammer, than I ever had swinging an axe!

Using this tool I quite quickly split down logs into good sized pieces for my rocket mass heater. Before I knew it I had a wheelbarrow load ready to be moved into the wood shed. As I said at the beginning of this piece, if you have a wood burner, and especially if you have a rocket mass heater, this is a tool you should find VERY useful! It’s well worth the time and/or money.

Studio Snippet

There will just be a short studio snippet today as it’s late and I’ve already spent too much time assembling this post. Yesterday I was able to find a quiet time to sit down and work out the next stage of design to be chased into this piece. I believe I’ve shared it before on a previous snippet. It’s a piece I’ve had in process for quite some time now, mostly just sitting and waiting for me to decide what needed to happen next.

The new design section is currently only in pencil so I need to be very careful when handling it so I don’t rub the lines away. Before I start chasing I will set the lines more firmly by going over them with a micro burnisher to scratch/polish them in.

I’m happy to have a site where I can again allow comments. (I had to shut them off on my main website because the spam was simply uncontrollable!) So please I encourage you to share thoughts of your own. My general rule about comments though is just to play nice. Differing views are fine, but I’m not interested in engaging in or moderating verbal fights. If I feel things get out of hand, by whatever criteria I decide, I’ll just start blocking or deleting things.