Splitting hazel (and other wood) poles

I learnt a new skill yesterday and thought I would share the experience here.

Split hazel is a traditional coppice product that can be used for various purposes. One advantage of splitting the wood is that you get twice as many lengths to use, another is that the wood becomes more flexible in one dimension so can be more easily woven in and out to make the panels.

Some example uses of split wood:

making hurdles - lightweight moveable fences for eg. sheep containment

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the 'wattle' bit in wattle and daub wall panels

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I'm making an octagonal shed at the moment (link to my project thread) and I wanted long flexible poles for the roof structure, which will be lightweight like a yurt. I found this video which takes you though the simple process of splitting the wood.

The first step is selecting your poles. Traditionally the wood would come from managed coppice. This practise results in lots of straight stems of a similar size. My woodland is still fairly immature. The hazel is a little slow to establish here due to the wind and grass competition, but I did find a dozen or so stems which were reasonably long and straight. I also harvested some from native, naturally multistemmed trees down by the riverbank.



The side branches need to be stripped off, and the tops of the poles. Very thin poles are too tricky to split, they need to be at least half an inch in diameter. Bendy and knotted poles are also difficult to split.
A sharp axe is used to make a cut in the narrow end of the pole. This takes a bit of practice. A firm knock, moving the axe and pole together, is the trick to avoid cutting your fingers. I actually just used an axe head, the handle needs mending, but is not necessary for this operation.



The actual cleaving is carried out using a metal wedge mouted on a post or vise at chest height. The blade doesn’t have to be sharp, since the actual splitting is done by opening up the split by bending the pole, not pushing forwards against the wedge. I used a blunt kindling hatchet mounted on a fence post and this seemed to work quite well. I had to tighten the clamps a couple of times as it loosened a bit in use.



The split end is then pushed over the wedge and the long end clamped under your arm. By moving you body side to side the pole is pushed against the wedge sides and the split opens up. The pole can then be moved forewards and the next bit split in a similar way. If you are lucky (or skillful) it propagates nicely through the centre of the pole and you end up with two halves along the length.



If the split starts to go to one side then you need to bend the thicker stronger side away and put more pressure on the wedge than the other weaker side, and (hopefully) this will tend to recentre the split. Sometimes a bend or a large knot makes it difficult to predict where the wood will split and a good sharp axe is required to cut through the obstacle before continuing with the wedge.

I found that it took a few goes to get the hang of things. Issues I had included that my axe head was really still a bit blunt, so starting the split was a bit tricky. My hazel didn’t come from managed coppice, and although it was of good length, it was rather bendy and knotty so didn’t always split evenly. It was also for the same reason probably older than managed coppice, slower grown and stiffer, so I found it difficult to bend in such a way as to keep the splits central. You need a fair amount of upper body/arm strength to bend the hazel poles against the wedge to create the splits. Many of the the poles were too stiff/big so I couldn’t control the split, or they were too small to be able to start the split.
On the video linked above he discusses the age of the poles and whether that affects the ease of splitting. My poles were cut one day and split the next. It may be that the splitting would become easier once the wood has dried out a little, alternatively if the wood becomes stiffer I might actually have found it even more difficult to bend and control the split. Even so I managed to split at least half my poles that were thick enough the full length, and most of them to within a couple of feet of the thick end. I suspect that having better quality poles would have made a lot of difference.
I hope sharing my experience will help others thinking of doing this, and if anyone has more hints to share I'd be grateful.

Thanks for posting this!
I have  been looking at some of the branches I'm going to pollard and thinking I had left them way too long!

Thank you

Nancy, your first picture shows all the poles with the bark side out. Would this be the traditional way to do this, or would people sometimes alternate split side/bark side?

Jay Angler wrote:Nancy, your first picture shows all the poles with the bark side out. Would this be the traditional way to do this, or would people sometimes alternate split side/bark side?

To be honest Jay, I really don't know what the traditional way of putting the poles would be.
If I were doing it for myself, where both sides were equally important - like a sheep hurdle, then I would probably alternate them as I felt like, either one and one, or in bands. I feel that this would even out the stresses in the wood better and make it a little more robust. These days the panels are usually sold as garden fencing, so people can specify all bark on one side, or in bands to give the effect they want, on the inside or outside of their garden. Most of the ones i found online were all one one side like this:

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This maybe the more traditional way of doing it too. I have a book published in 1949: Woodland crafts in Britain by H L Edlin, which says that the weave was very regional. Even then the main use had become garden panels, rather than moveable sheep hurdles. The lower and top edges were often whole rods, and the split canes were twisted around at the ends of the hurdles. But the photos in this book show the split side generally being just on one side of the panel.

In my climate, I'd be thinking putting the bark side towards our prevailing winds might have merit. It would be an interesting experiment to try, but my hazels aren't doing well enough to give me raw material any time soon!

However, my bamboo *is* in need of harvesting next summer, and I'm thinking I should try the same method for splitting some of it. The last time I tried to split some, I wasn't happy with the difficulty I had controlling and doing it, and some variation of what you've shown might work better.

Jay Angler wrote:
However, my bamboo *is* in need of harvesting next summer, and I'm thinking I should try the same method for splitting some of it. The last time I tried to split some, I wasn't happy with the difficulty I had controlling and doing it, and some variation of what you've shown might work better.

In the book, it shows some people cleaving using a hand held blade (a froe?) and mentions the technique i followed as a regional thing. I suspect doing it freehand takes a lot more practise, but would be quicker and more portable once skilled.

Nancy Reading wrote:In the book, it shows some people cleaving using a hand held blade (a froe?) and mentions the technique i followed as a regional thing. I suspect doing it freehand takes a lot more practise, but would be quicker and more portable once skilled.

Maybe - if you have bigger, stronger hands than I have. Having the "tool secured" and being able to use both my hands on the piece of bamboo will likely be easier on me. I'm used to having to go the route of "not as efficient, but better safe than sorry" approach to projects!

I'm glad you posted about this, Nancy. Do you, or anyone else, know how long the panel is typically supposed to last? Let's assume a temperate climate- some rain, but not too much, not too dry, not too windy, just some breezes.

Annie Collins wrote:I'm glad you posted about this, Nancy. Do you, or anyone else, know how long the panel is typically supposed to last? Let's assume a temperate climate- some rain, but not too much, not too dry, not too windy, just some breezes.

This was my first go at this craft to be honest Annie, so I don't know from experience. I read that split hazel actually lasts longer than whole hazel - I guess it is able to dry out more easily as the moisture doesn't get trapped inside the bark.
According to this site, hurdle panels should last between 5 and 10 years. I suspect that is a bit on the conservative side, but as always it depends! Insects and fungi will eventually do their thing...The great thing about them though is that as well as looking beautiful, as they are made from renewable resources (coppicing is a wonderful way of creating infinite amounts of useful wood material) and can be returned to the soil when they do reach the end of their life.

Nancy Reading wrote:
According to this site, hurdle panels should last between 5 and 10 years. I suspect that is a bit on the conservative side, but as always it depends! Insects and fungi will eventually do their thing...The great thing about them though is that as well as looking beautiful, as they are made from renewable resources (coppicing is a wonderful way of creating infinite amounts of useful wood material) and can be returned to the soil when they do reach the end of their life.

Five to ten years, and that as a possibly conservative estimate, sounds well worth the effort put into making these!

Hi Nancy, do you think hazel rod is easy to split into thinner planks? I want to heat split wood over a flame and bend into desired shapes for basket making. Have you tried something like that with hazel?

May Lotito wrote:Hi Nancy, do you think hazel rod is easy to split into thinner planks? I want to heat split wood over a flame and bend into desired shapes for basket making. Have you tried something like that with hazel?

I didn't try splitting smaller pieces. I suspect it is both easier (less hard work) and more difficult (needs more skill)! I suspect it would be easy to end up with quite short bits - 2 feet or so, which may be long enough for your intended purpose. Maybe starting with smaller bits and sharper/smaller knives and wedges? If I have a moment I may have a go.....
The wood is quite bendy even when relatively thick, so I think you could try making baskets even without the heat. Willow may be a better bet for more intricate work though.

Re the 5 to 10 years estimate - the traditional use for these was to make large numbers of lightweight portable hurdles for temporarily fencing livestock. They would be used for sheep pens at sheering and the like. They would probably only spend a few weeks each year out in the elements and the rest of the time they were likely stored undercover in barns. I doubt you would get 10 years for a panel out year round if you needed it to contain livestock. For purely decorative purposes in a garden it might hold up.

In the UK where this craft originates permanent fencing varied from region to region but was typically either dry stone walling, or a laid hedge.