Abstract
Teluk Dalam Village, Teluk Dalam Sub-district, Asahan Regency, has the potential of a home-based palm-leaf broom craft. One of the most time-consuming and hazardous stages is separating the leaf blade from the leaf rib (stripping the palm rib), which is done manually with a knife without adequate tools, making it prone to hand injuries, fatigue, and uneven results. This community service aims to design and build a simple manual palm-rib stripping tool made of wood with a pair of cutter blades (left and right) operated while seated, as an appropriate technology to improve craftsmen's safety and work efficiency. The methods include observation, problem identification, design, material selection, fabrication, testing, and mentoring. The results show that using the tool reduces stripping time and increases output per unit of time compared with the conventional method, while lowering the risk of direct hand contact with the blade because the cutting edge is fixed to the tool. The tool proves to be low-cost, easy to build, and replicable independently by the community.
