Are you forging the froe in the profile of a wood chisel or a splitting wedge? It's an ongoing argument in this area.
This is probably a question to be put to Roy Underhill, since Eric Sloane isn't around anymore to answer it. I can
only rely on my own experience and research over the past 30 or more years.
I've never heard the argument until now. Until I read Graeme's post, I didn't know anybody made chisel edged
froes as a general rule. In fact, I have never seen such a froe. The only non-standard froe I know is a cooper's
froe, which has a segmented arc for easier production of barrel staves.
As Graeme points out, the style of the cutting edge is pretty inconsequential when almost all of the work uses
the froe as a sort of pry bar. It's a splitting tool, not a cutting tool. You want to shave the shingles? Use a
draw knife after you've split them out.
Like I said, I haven't heard the argument. It's not mentioned by Underhill, or Sloane, nor is it found
in the Fox Fire books, which record the experiences of people who used such tools traditionally. I don't
find it in Bealer's book on traditional wood work, nor in Aldren Watson's Country Furniture, both respectable
resources for pre-industrial carpentry.
The Oxford English Dictionary, the most scholarly and precise dictionary of the English language, defines
a froe as:
"A wedge shaped tool used for cleaving and riving staves, shingles, etc."
Drew Langsner, in his 1978 book, Country Woodcraft, writes of the froe blade:
"The blade should be gradually tapered forming a fairly acute angle at the cleaving edge. In cross section,
the flanks are slightly convex so that the contact point rolls across the blade as the froe is levered back and
forth."
I'm sure that the advocates of the chisel edge have their arguments lined up, but modern people tend to
forget that tools like the froe are the result of many, many, perhaps hundreds of years of hands on
experience through generations of carpenters. Traditional froes are wedge shaped for a reason, a
reason derived from generations of experience.
