Meet Ayla Hutchinson from New Zealand—the young inventor behind the Kindling Cracker™. At just 13 years old, Ayla designed the world’s safest firewood splitter after her mother injured her fingers while using an axe. Her idea was simple yet revolutionary: turn the axe blade upside down and create a safer way to split wood—one that anyone can use, young or old.
It’s remarkable that it took nearly 5,000 years for someone to reinvent the way we split firewood—and that someone was a teenage girl from New Zealand.
Today, Ayla’s Kindling Cracker™ is an award-winning global success, with patents in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan. In 2018, her achievement was even honoured with a New Zealand postage stamp, celebrating her ingenuity and the worldwide impact of her invention.
