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13-Year-Old Kiwi Girl Invents Device That Safely Turns Firewood Into Kindling

Ayla Hutchinson

New Zealand isn’t a place one thinks of as needing firewood. But Ayla Hutchinson lives and hikes with her family near New Zealand’s snow-covered Mount Taranaki, where “it can get VERY cold in the winter,” she writes. “When you are cold, you can never get the fire going fast enough. Lots of little kindling helps fires to start quickly.” So when she was just 13, Ayla invented a device to help swiftly and safely turn firewood into thinner kindling.

Here’s how it works:

The Kindling Cracker, as it’s called, is undeniably clever. It’s not meant to replace an axe altogether—you’ll still need a pre-split piece of wood to insert within the cast-iron device’s 6.5"-diameter top ring—but it makes good sense on a campsite where division of labor is beneficial. While dad is splitting logs with an axe, for instance, mom can be turning the split pieces into kindling using a mallet or even another piece of wood. “[Part of the reason I invented this was] to make sure my mum kept all of her fingers and limbs intact!” Ayla writes.

Ayla originally invented the device for a school science project. That was seven years ago. Today Kindling Cracker LTD. is a going concern, and their eponymous device is sold around the world.

The Kindling Cracker’s U.S. distributor is Northern Tool, and it retails here for USD $85.