If you don’t camp or have a fireplace, then you probably don’t know this, but ... making kindling can be darn difficult. A simple-but-clever new device known as Mr. Quicksplit, however, looks like it makes the process a lot easier.
Ordinarily, if you’re trying to split a large piece of wood into small pieces of kindling, you have to prop it up on end and then whack it length-wise with an axe. Once you’ve split it in two, you then split each of those pieces in two, and so on and so forth until you’ve got kindling.
While the first couple of splits might be relatively easy, however, it gets more and more difficult to land the axe in the top center of the increasingly-narrower pieces of split wood. It’s not uncommon to end up delivering unproductive glancing blows, or getting the axe stuck in the wood because you haven’t hit it hard enough.
Created by Canadian blacksmith Martin Reinhard, Mr. Quicksplit uses precisely-applied leverage instead of axe-swinging heft to make kindling. Users just mount a piece of wood in the device, then use the torque generated by its long handle to drive its blade down through the wood.
It can be more or less permanently mounted in place using screws, although campers can also temporarily attach it to a tree trunk using ratcheting straps.
Mr. Quicksplit is available direct from Reinhard’s online store, for CAD$148 (US$150).
Source: Willow Creek Forge via Dragon’s Den
