A froe (or frow), shake axe or paling knife is a tool for cleaving wood by splitting it along the grain. It is an L-shaped tool, used by hammering one edge of its blade into the end of a piece of wood in the direction of the grain, then twisting the blade in the wood by rotating the haft (handle).

Growthcraft Usage
The froe will be used to split wood planks into 4 wood plank. Thus maximizing your wood usage for the Wood Burning Stove.

Crafting

S - Stick (2), I - Iron Ingot (1), N - Iron Nugget (2).

I-- 
NS-  
N-S  

I'd opt for a chopping block instead. You'd rightclick a log on it an then whack it (n times)with an axe to get firewood.
This could be done with in world crafting without requiring time spent in an interface. It'd also be more visually attractive to see the log in world getting chopped to pieces. Speed crafting with off-hand mechanics could be a thing too, similar to concrete crafting.

when looking at this, there's already something similar to what I'm suggesting alternatively in:
https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/survivalist

If it doesn't get implemented could we get a compatibility for this instead?

Isn't wood planks split into sticks currently? Wouldn't those be your individual firewood splits?

The purpose is to have a new Heat source block like the magma block.
The culture jar will be able to sit on top of it.

@Syndaryl That's how it is currently in that specific mod. Integration would entail logs or planks being split into firewood and firewood then being split into sticks. Thinking about it integration in such a manner would better be handled at their end.

I still feel this would be a more immersive addition to include a version of in Growthcraft itself.

@Deshiba Sorry, I meant for this mod - not discussing Survivalist in particular. I'm questioning the need to subdivide planks into a special fuel item, when we already subdivide them into sticks.

Well that depends on what the wood burning stove is used for and if it will even take sticks as fuel.

Then the need for specific fire wood as a fuel source is debatable indeed. The fuel sources already in the game wouldn't suffice?

The purpose of the stove will also be cooking. With a pan or pot. This idea has been around for awhile with Growthcraft Kitchen.