Batoning--out of necessity

S

Swedge

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Dec 23, 2008
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There's a lot of talk about batoning through wood with a knife. Who here has done it because he had to. Not for practice. Not for camping when you deliberately didn't bring another tool because you planned to baton with your knife. You did it because you were stuck.

If so, what were the circumstances? Just curious.
 
I had a life and death situation....my wife was going to kill me because I forgot my bar-b-que utensils when we went to our friends house to cook :eek: (I remembered my pit, just not my tools). I did however, have my Emerson Commander clipped to my pocket. So, out of desperation I batoned that mesquite wood until I had a descent fire going. The chicken went first since it took the longest, then the meat, and lastly the sausage. Went great with some potato salad, rice, and beans....Mmmmmm, damn, now I'm hungry :p

And before you say anything, they aren't the outdoorsy type, so they didn't have an axe or fixed blade to substitute.

My commander has been to hell and back on many an outings, so this wasn't anything new for it as I had batoned with it before. I put that #1 hard use knife title to the test :D
 
On a more serious note (my wife really was pissed :grumpy:) there's a lot of good responses to this in the W&SS section. There's a bigger variety of outdoors men there who actually live in various parts of the globe and I'm sure you'd get some great responses from them :thumbup:
 
This year i must splitting lot of dry firewood three times. Mainly because on weekend camping events our teammates brang everything to cook food - except an acceptable axe... :grumpy: So I had the opportunity to test my brand new Kabar Becker BK7's splitting skill. :D It served well. :thumbup:

Kabar_BK7_2.jpg
 
Yeah, just about everytime I went in the field when I was in the USMC back in the early 80's. ;)
 
I went on a hiking trip some time back and I was the only one with a knife. Yeah, and a working lighter, if you can believe that.

Unfortunately being a hiking mission I had packed super light and the knife I had brought along was my One Hand Trekker, which is not the best thing for batoning.

Lo and behold, we wanted to make a fire to ward off the cold, as it had started to drizzle, and all we had were big chunks of firewood.

So I had to put the SAK to work - but I screwed up by not disengaging the lock. Hence my cool Bundeswehr OHT now has a loose blade.

I was really pissed at myself for not bringing another blade (which I realised I could have left in the vehicle) so that was a lesson learned.

Batoning is a necessary skill unless you travel with a hatchet, which most people do not.

Anyway, I won't go hiking without at least one fixed blade again - believe it!
 
The OP is a bit contrived at least in terms of defining being stuck. Seems to be asking who has used a knife to baton during a survival situation. Frankly, not a lot of people have been in a survival situation. If you lost your kit and still had your knife, you still might not fully think you are in a survival situation.

I often go camping with just knives and don't bring an axe for one reason or another. I split wood with knives because I need to split the wood and I've brought the knives as the tool to do the job. I can't figure why people find that surprising or unusual. I like axes and hatchets but sure as heck don't view them as indispensable camp tools. For me, I only find them useful to bring when I know I have to process a lot of wood.
 
I felt sorry for a man who had no hatchet...until I met a man who had no knife...and then there was that dead guy. SORRY!~)
 
Yes, i planned on batonning, because it is much safer for me, to make small fire wood that way.

I get a Ka-bar heavy bowie for that work instead of a small axe.
 
kgd said:
The OP is a bit contrived at least in terms of defining being stuck.
Click to expand...

Yes, of course. Otherwise with a question about who uses his knife for batoning, I would get a bunch of responses that don't answer the question that I had. But no, it's not related to survival per se (or I would have phrased it that way). The first response was of the kind that I was looking for. And it had nothing to do with survival. Well, I don't know his wife, but I assume it was not life or death. :)

I am asking about situations where you didn't plan to use the knife for batoning but for some reason you felt you had to. I didn't define the term "stuck" in the OP. You get to define it with the answer.
 
I've never batoned a knife through anything; for firewood, I just cut a wooden wedge, with as fine a wedge point as possible. Tap the knife into the wood to be split, then tap in the wedge after. Allow the wedge to do the work. It's a little more work, but I did this for a long time, and all I had was a Buck 119. Opinions on this may vary, but it worked for me.

thx - cpr
 
I'd like to add another time where it was a necessity to cook and to help a friend all in one trip. It was the annual Shark-a-thon down on the National Seashore close to where I live. We had ice chest upon ice chest of food, drinks, booze, bait, etc...I was the designated cook since I wasn't entered in the tournament. I just wanted to go camping with the guys for the 3 days we were out :) So we drive south on the beach for about 3 hours (yes it is possible to drive 5 hours and not find the end :eek:). It was after the hurricane that hit Galveston in 2008 so there was debris everywhere, small boats too.

After we set up camp the guys had their shark towers ready to go and the kayak out setting the lines. I realized something, "what the hell are we going to use to cook our food?" Everyone looked puzzled, we were so excited to just get out there that we hadn't thought about that. Luckily there was plenty of driftwood and boards (unfortunately from the hurricane) all over the place. All we had with us was my Gerber Freeman fixed hunter, a 3.5" blade length knife and my spyderco pacific salt.

So I used my Freeman Hunter to baton and baton and baton until my hands hurt from beating that poor knife. I went with the grain, against the grain, through the grain - and that Gerber kept on kicking. We all ate good that weekend, 3 square meals, bar-b-que for most of it, and I cooked plenty to go around - there were 6 of us.

During the same trip, one of the guys was stung by a ray on his heel. We had two stations (and 3 trucks), so our "Home" location had two vehicles and one tower, and the other "outpost" had the third truck with one tower. So one of our guys gets stung at the outpost about a quarter of a mile down, so I grabbed my Camelbak Mule and raced over there. He took the sting pretty well, but it looked uuuugly. I pulled out my Freeman Hunter and grabbed the nearest piece of wood (it was literally everywhere). I batoned and batoned until I had enough little pieces to get a fire going. I actually tried to use my matches but the box had gone soft from being on the beach for so long, so I had to use my magnesium block to get the fire going. The purpose of the fire was to get some hot water on the sting to sooth it. Once we had a small fire going (in a little pit I dug out) I used my metal cup and filled it with water from my camelbak mule and set it on the fire. While the water was getting warm, I pulled out the first aid kit and let him take a look at it. I believe he used some of the alcohol pads and not the "sting" ointment because the rays sting is bacteria and not your typical "itchy" sting from a bug. Once the water was hot enough, he grabbed the cup and applied the water as was needed. We used about 3-4 fill-ups of water in the cup before he felt good enough to walk off to his chair. Wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't batoned that 3.5" gerber freeman hunter :thumbup:

I hope that is more along the spirit of the thread, J.
 
I always travel with a light hatchet.

But for a survival fire, you can always break smal dead branches off of trees above ground level. I've never had to split wood to start a fire.

And I hunt/hike/camp in very remote areas of the Colorado Rockies.

Carrying a small road flare in your pack (they come in three packs at Wal-Mart) will start a fire in wet wood in a few seconds. And it's a helluva lot easier and quicker than batoning wood with a knife.
 
Sort of...

Backpacking with my scout troop. It had snowed overnight, and during the whole next day we had snow/wet snow/cold rain as we dropped in elevation. In the evening they could not get anything to burn after being soaked like that and cold. I had a fixed blade (BRKT Northstar) and a small Opinel saw, so I used them to cut some larger wood and baton them to get the dry wood in the middle. We had a good fire after that. No, we technically did not have to have a fire - we had tents and sleeping bags. But it sure was nice to have a fire.
 
orca8589 said:
I've never batoned a knife through anything; for firewood, I just cut a wooden wedge, with as fine a wedge point as possible. Tap the knife into the wood to be split, then tap in the wedge after. Allow the wedge to do the work. It's a little more work, but I did this for a long time, and all I had was a Buck 119. Opinions on this may vary, but it worked for me.

thx - cpr
Click to expand...

For the longest time I did something similar with my 119, except once I started tapping it into the wood, I continued tapping it until the wood split :D 119 is a hell of a knife and its split a cord or more of wood in the time I've had it!
 
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