Batoning - how much is too much?

[Maniacal Pete]

Years of camping, hunting and canoeing and never heard of batoning until I came here. My grandfather was a professional scout master, my father and uncles eagle scouts, and my other grandfather a hard core country boy and do it yourself type and never once engaged in this activity or mentioned it. Knives were for cutting, axes and wedges were for splitting, and camp saws did the sawing. This is also why I fail to understand the 'hard use' mentality. I was taught to protect tools and only use them as intended.

Yes, it's funny what we have learned with the advent of the internet.
All kinds of techniques that we, in our "expert minds," never even knew existed.

I disagree with you that batonning through wood is not using a chopper "as intended."
You can save a lot of travel weight using such a knife in conjunction with a folding saw if you intention is to end up with split fire wood.

Or you can pack a small hatchet and use it to baton through the wood to split it like a splitting wedge.

Either way, I approach it in a fun manner, after all it is my hobby, and I personally like to practice it in a variety of ways.

 

[Maniacal Pete]

I saw up to 3" diameter wood with my Barca Laplander folding saw. Then use my baton with my 4.5" knife to split into kindling.

That's pretty much how I do it. :thumbup:
My firewood processing set up is highly efficient (far moreso than using an axe, IMO) and weighs about 1.5 lb.

I find the whole controversy about batonning terribly amusing...It flat-out works if done right...

Agree.

Batoning is done WITH the grain ,NOT cross grain !!! Cross grain is abuse !

Disagree, look at blunttruth4u on youtube batonning with a Bravo 1 cross grain to build an emergency shelter.
There is actually no other way to do it if you have a smallish survival blade.


lol @ the "golf clap."

OP, what kind of kukri is that?

 

[sqchram]

Save that log. I'm catching a flight up to WA and turning that sumbich into hamster cage chips with my busse!

 

[Vicarious Reality]

OP, what kind of kukri is that?

That


Also, i would probably never do this unless i had to, or perhaps just to see how it is done with my toughest knife/ves

 

[Maniacal Pete]

5160 steel full tang kukris are essentially sharpened prybars, and made for this kind of work.
I'm sure that knife is practically unbreakable, short of using other tools to break it.

Here's my user:

I've smacked it through a few objects, pretty fun, and good stress relief, actually...

 

[Mannlicher]

other than batoning just to do it, I have never, in some 50+ years going afield, had to baton any wood at any time. A great skill to know, but not a skill that many folks ever have to use to survive. Way too much wood just laying around.

 

[jonathan13]

Mete, batoning cross grain is not abuse to a fixed blade! It's just hard use and a good test to show the knife's strength.

 

[Bigfattyt]

Cross grain batonning. Serves a purpose, especially with smaller stuff, when you don't have a chopper.

I probably would have just chopped. But that was not the point of the fun exercise.

Batonning is a useful skill. I don't tend to camp with an axe or saw. I don't really own either. That is probably because I live close to my dad. Two chainsaws, maul, axes, wedges, etc. I don't have a fireplace, and have no wood on my property. I great up cutting wood to heat our home. Trees up to 3+ feet thick at the base. Cut them down, section them up, and split them by hand.

My dad spent time as a logger. I don't think I have ever seen him baton anything. But he also is not much of a chopper man. He has a heavy machete that is about 1/4 inch thick but I don't think I have ever seen him chop anything with it.

I have machetes that baton just fine. I have one that I batonned so hard I bent the spine, I just took a maul and tapped flat again. It does not have the mass to split wood, but chopps great.

I am an eagle scout, and scout leader. I baton. I have taught the skill to my scouts. I really feel it is safer for the scouts to do, than letting them make kindling with my hawk, or camp hatchet. That does not make it wright. The fact that my own father does not use the same method does not make it wrong.

 

[Grease]

OP - Always thought you batoned to split the log, not chop it?

Batoning in our neck of the woods should just mean whacking a knife with a baton to cut something it ordinarily couldn't cut. But yeah, most people seem to mean splitting wood when they say batoning.

OP, what kind of kukri is that?

That's a GK&CO blade that I sort of rehandled. They don't do such a good job on the handles, but the steel is fantastic.

 

[TwinStick]

Hmm...How much is too much ?

If your knife breaks, then thats too much.

If in a true survival situation, i would try not to do anything that may damage the one main tool i had.

That being said, thats why i test the heck out of my knives at home, in a semi controlled environment. That way i know what they will take & if i break one, i'm just out the money & not my life.

 

[fatherhudson]

My axe, hatchet, chainsaw, bowsaw, or pet beaver will do it much quicker with no chance of injury to me or my knife.

I (kinda) beg to differ. hatchets are almost useless (except maybe in extreme survival situations) in my mind. I've been camping with a hatchet before and i always end up picking little sticks up off the ground instead of chopping wood. Saw's take forever as well. Even axes aren't that great for splitting wood unless you really know what you're doing or look like Lou Ferrigno. Maul = pinnacle of wood splitting technology and why use anything but the best?

Before you all jump down my throat, i'm used to chopping oak and even the douglas fir around here ain't that soft.

Anyways, how long did it take you to chop through that (7 inch) log? I'm guessing well more than an hour?

 

[Alberta Ed]

That's what axes are for.

 

[Halfneck]

I (kinda) beg to differ. hatchets are almost useless (except maybe in extreme survival situations) in my mind. I've been camping with a hatchet before and i always end up picking little sticks up off the ground instead of chopping wood.

So how does that make a hatchet useless? If there are small sticks laying around to be picked up, how would having a knife to baton with be any better?

 

[killgar]

I wonder where people are camping that they are allowed to build fires? I know that here in California, building fires in state parks is frowned upon. Aside from the fact that most people simply can't be trusted to have a fire, drought and the threat of widfires make the old-fasioned campfire a thing of the past. All the campers and backpackers I know use fuel-burning stoves to cook with.

And If you are in a campground with fire rings and camp fires are permitted, then your car must be nearby, which means you could bring a wide variety of woodcutting tools.

As mentioned already, if I were in a survival situation I would want to be careful not to break my knife. As far as testing a knife beforehand to see how much "hard-use" it can take, well, nothing breaks until it does. Maybe the first hundred whacks won't break it, but how about one hundred and one.

 

[Bobber]

Hello my name is Bobber, and I`m a battoner......
I batton all my fulltang knives, I love it, and I know they can take the "abuse" if done right...
I live in a country that has really cold climate and nights darker than the bottom of a backpocket, lol...
If I am cold,wet or it is too dark, I batton the firewood... I don`t want to swing an axe around if I feel safer battoning.
Too easy to slip up with an axe or hatchet when cold or wet...

That`s why I have always learned my kids battoning first too, they have a lot more controll and feel when they do this.. (And both hands are occupied so no fingers will be at risk)....

This is my personal oppinion, others might have other things to say, but this is how I roll....

 

[tfields]

i think it has its place but here in the woods way too much dry dead stuff too burn to make it worth the energy burned! besides i hate too work hard lol!

 

[upnorth]

Everyone is free to bushcraft however they like. It's a free country. Personally, I consider batonning one of those bushcraft skills like turning a pant leg into a filter with layers of moss, sand, and pebbles and peeing in it to get consumable liquid: a skill that I know about and which could save my life, but which I'd prefer not to do. A small axe and/or folding saw processes wood very well.

Yupper. I enjoy a little batoning now and then. I bring a hatchet or saw along these days and baton smaller bits for kindling. I've hammered a BK-2 through a log and it sucked the fun out of it.

 

[Jackfish]

I agree its not the most necessary thing in most cases. Obviously there are better tools for chopping than a belt knife of any kind. That said my sons learned how to baton a ka bar long before I would trust them to swing a hatchet. Hatchets have a place in the world too but way too many hatchet accidents occur for me to take that chance when mine or my kids safety is at stake in a survival situation. I can send my boys out to the fire pit (where there is precut round wood) with their knives and tell them to make a fire. They get to play with their knives safely (and let's face it we all just want to play with our knives ) and they get to feel like they contributed to the wiener roast. When minimalist car camping in campgrounds where wood is precut I will always make sure someone brought a full tang.. When camping in the woods for moose or elk hunting there is always a chainsaw and axe around.. When out hiking during the hunt deadfall sticks and plentiful other fuel negates the need for batoning, but at the home fire pit and at the public park it's fun and easy and safe.