Billhook

From Freepedia

The billhook is a traditional cutting tool used mainly in European agriculture, having a very heavy, high carbon steel blade with an increasingly strong curve towards the end, the blade is usually sharpened only on the inside of the curve. Typically the blade is 8 - 12 inches long with a wooden handle of 4 - 6 inches. The edge of the billhook is bevelled at a relatively obtuse angle in order to avoid binding in green wood. Perhaps best thought of as half way between a knife and an axe, it is used for cutting thick woody plants such as saplings and small branches and for "snedding" (stripping the shoots from a branch).


The billhook's use as a British cutting tool goes back to the Iron Age, it is the British equivalent of all large woodland utility knives (machetes, parangs, khukris, etc).

The tool (being of an ancient design) has been in existence for so long it has developed a large variety of names in different parts of Britain including:

  • bill
  • billhook
  • hook bill
  • hedging bill
  • hand bill
  • broom hook
  • hack
  • hacker

A billhook may have a sharpened, raised section along its back edge to assist in chopping against a flat surface, this variation may have originated in Yorkshire and is sometimes known as a Yorkshire Bill.

In modern times, billhooks are in common use by thatchers, coppicers, hurdle makers, charcoal burners and often by other traditional craftsmen, farmers and woodsmen. It is also the primary tool for hedgers.

In the medaeval period the billhook was developed into a military weapon also known as a bill / billhook.

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