ten feet long and approximately eleven inches in diameter the surfaces 40 42 of the rolls 34 36 are contoured with parallel spaced circumferential grooves 44 circumferential ridges 46 are defined between adjacent grooves 44 each groove 44 is defined as the intersection of two frustoconical side surfaces 55 as shown in fig4 the grooves 44 of the first roll 34 interdigitate with the ridges 46 of the second roll 36 the nip 32 shown in fig1 and 4 is sinuous and snakes back and forth between the opposed ridges and grooves of the first and second rolls 34 36 the wood strands 22 leave the vibrating conveyor 23 and free fall into the nip 32 between the rolls 34 36 as shown in fig2 and 3 the wood strands 22 enter the nip 32 with their grain oriented in the direction of travel and thus the grain of the strands 22 is substantially tangent to the rolls 34 36 as the wood strands 22 pass through the nip 32 they are forced to conform to the sinuous saw toothed shaped gap 48 of the nip 32 this causes the strands 22 to bend sharply parallel to the grain which fractures the chips into narrow strands 50 the width of the resulting processed strands 50 is dependent on the size of the grooves 44 and the ridges 46 it has been found that a strand splitter having rolls with grooves which are three quarters of an inch deep and three quarters of an inch wide will produce processed strands which have a maximum width of approximately.