A New Froe

Over the past few months, I’ve become more interested in greenwoodworking (more on that later) and decided I needed a froe. A few weeks back, my family and I went to a large trade days/flea market a couple of hours from home. I was on the hunt to find my prize.

I found one at an old tool vendor’s booth, but it was a little small, and not exactly what I was looking for, so I continued to scour the tents and tables. However, at the end of the day, I was still empty handed, so back to the first vendor I went.

The tool guy is a fan of buffing wheels, but he usually has a lot of good stuff. Oh, and thanks Dad for the handle blank.

The edge is a little worn and has a chip or two, but I figured that would be OK for how I’ll use it.

I used a drawknife, spokeshave, and plane to form the handle, starting with the tenon to fit in the eye of the froe.

Once I got close, I switched to a Mora 106 to get the fit right and define the shoulder at the base of the tenon

After I had the fit up right, I went to work on the rest of the handle.

The eye of the froe is oval shaped. Due to the grain direction of my blank, the oval shape of the handle wasn’t going to be square to the faces of the blank. The pencil mark on the end helped keep every thing lined up.

I used a bench plane, set to take a deep cut, to hog off a lot of material at a time. I tried to make sure the sides of the tenon and the sides of the handle stayed lined up.

Once the handle was roughed out, I used the spokeshave to finish up.

Again, I used the Mora to define the shoulder of the tenon.

A lot of froes have a tapered eye and the handle is widest at one end. The handle slides into the eye and is held in place by the tapered fit between the eye and the end of the handle. This froe doesn’t have a tapered eye, so the handle gets locked in with a wedge.

After a couple of coats of Danish Oil, and a few hours to dry, this project was done.

Now to find some potential spoons that need to be freed.