Splitting spills

[tombear]

Ok this may seam obvious but whats the best way to make spills? (the flat sort for making sulphur matches rather than the curled ones from a plane) I need to make some of certain sizes and quite thin, like less than match thick.

Are any particular woods especially good for it?

I've some thin replaceable scraper blades which I was going to fit between a couple of Xacto knife handles to make a very thin short draw knife.

Any pointers?

Cheers

Tom

 

[jdlenton]

western red cedar should split very nicely other than that i have no idea of a reasonable method of splitting

 

[Tengu]

veneer offcuts and craft knife?

 

[Toddy]

My grandfather made spills and spunks for lighting the fire and the cooker.
He used pine. He just cut it into thin rectangles (like kindling) with an axe, crosscut, and then as neat as sixpence split it straight down the growth rings. He trimmed them up with the knife he used to scrape out and tamp down his pipe. One blade on it was wickedly sharp.

I remember him telling my brother never to light his pipe with a spunk

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Hairy Steve]

I think Poplar is the usual timber for match making so should work for spills

 

[tombear]

Poplar or pine and split it down the growth rings eh?

Cheers folks!

I better get my battered old Estwing No. 4 on my shiny new Tormek 7 (yes the novelty hasn't worn off, I'm still putting unsuitable razor edges on anything I can find ) to do the rough work and I've a army jack knife thats great for splitting...

ATB

Tom

 

[Toddy]

You know Ash would split beautifully, and fine too. It has the reputation of being among the best to burn.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Bardster]

I sliced half an ash log into 1mm slices and then into 3mm strips on my bandsaw - very nice spills! Quick and easy too.

 

[tombear]

Ash you say?, it just happens that I have a lot of ash logs (rotting away no doubt it being ash) out back from when the council chopped up the tree that narrowly missed our house and flattened next doors new Ka.

I could have cried as while I was at work they chopped the whole thing into handy sized slices and the rot only went up about 8 feet! It was 160 yrs old the reckoned.

Cheers!

ATB

Tom

 

[Sean Hellman]

The easiest wood would be pine, nice straight grain stuff, no knots, recycled stuff is easy to get hold of.

The most important thing to remember when splitting is to split in half, split that half in half etc etc. The aim is to get an equal mass of wood each side of the split each time.

Cut into the right length before splitting.