The froe was used for more than making shakes. Back when any sawed wood was sawn by hand, craftsmen looked for less backbreaking shortcuts. Hewing axes and adzes were used to square up tree trunks. The froe split logs and branches to rough cut things like barrel staves, which were later refined with a draw knife and plane. Split dowels are actually stronger than turned dowels. They were rough shaped with a froe, and then pounded through a round hole in a steel plate—the same way you draw wire to a thinner gauge. Back in the day, labor was cheap and iron was expensive. So dowels were used to hold post and beam constructions together. They were actually called treenails. To make siding, long straight trunks were loaded into a frame called a “riving break” that held them horizontally while the craftsman split the sticks with hammer and froe.