Batoning thoughts

First of all, saying you could care less actually means you care.

There are tons of threads on this topic. I personally enjoy batoning and find it safer than swinging an axe.

You haven't found a need for it. Great!

 

Batoning...shouldn't really be necessary if you pack a decent hatchet.
Fire stick...I think you're supposed to use the spine of the blade.

 

Do a search on batoning and you should see multiple threads on the subject matter. I baton wood for smaller sticks for firewood when ever I make a fire. Not all knives have the proper ht or geometry for batoning.

 

Do you mean striking a ferro rod with the blade of a knife, OP? In which case that’s a stupid thing to do unless out of sheer desperation. There are other options. Also, I take a ferro rod as a back up for a lighter, you can use the spine of many knives or just use the attached striker...

Or did you mean making a feather stick? If so, that isn’t going to blunt a decent knife.

And yeah, splitting small kindling with a knife (or batonning if you like) is useful when it is very wet. It’s quite a good exercise to try making a fire in the rain or snow. I never see the need for batonning big logs, but it’s fun.

 

There is a difference between survial and just hiking,camping,being in the wild.

most of the time depending where you are ... yes there are enough sticks branches you could get fuel for a fire to survive without batoning ... but sometimes you can't ...

and probably 99% of batoning isn't done in a survival circumstance ... it's just another way to process wood and safely use certain sizes of wood that fit in a fire ring thats cleared and circled in rocks if possible to contain the fire ...

there are a couple things I can say ... and I do carry an axe often but not always ... you can save weight by carrying a knife capable of batoning ... and batoning if done properly is more controled and safer than swinging an axe. ...

and if it is a survial circumstance ... batoning actually takes less energy that swinging an axe ..

some baton some don't but no right or wrong ... and no judgement either way.

 

First, as you say, if you dont care what anyone here thinks, why post?

Second, if batonning is nothing but marketing nonsense, as you claim, why would you need it in a wet situation, like you also claim? You are contradicting yourself.

Finally, I wonder about how "family friendly" yourscreen name is.

 

"Batoning is useless unless you need it".

Not a great discussion point.

 

Sometimes, reasonability takes a back seat to enjoyment. Sometimes we just like to do things because we want to or because we can.

In regards to dulling your blade for game by making a fire stick... do you only carry one blade? This is a knife forum after all. Even better, carry a traditional, like a trapper, that already has 2 blades and the handle is comfortable enough. That's actually a great idea because then you have a food blade and a dirty blade. You could go a step further and get a stockman for a dirty blade, raw blade, and ready to eat food blade. Or carry multiple knives because you have more than one pocket, belt, pack, boot, hand, etc.

A little imagination can answer all of those questions. Just because it's not what you would do doesn't make it "the wrong way."

 

I ask this with all sincerity. Are you genuinely interested in thoughts on it, and why someone might baton wood to split wood, or are you here to tell us you think it's stupid and you don't care if someone offers a valid counterpoint?

I guess it boils down to whether you're looking to learn, or looking to call people stupid and incite a poo-flinging contest. Either way I'm happy to oblige, it's just a question of your intent.

 

When you examine force and duration and direction on knives in typical uses, to include stabbing, and chopping....

and then compare the shock loads, direction of forces applied to handle, and blade (mostly opposite to normal use), also impact velocity of edges, and etc..

The only wonder is that knives hold up as long as they do....they certainly will have internal stress accumulate out the whazoo, be greatly fatiqued, and will fail quite sooner..

If not in original owner's hands, then in the hands of a subsequent owner...

I think several hundred years from now, the reputation of knives made today will be severely tarnished by high failure rates, the bushcraft craze maybe forgotten, and this generation accused of entering a dark ages of knife manufacture, .......

and wisdom of the time saying all knives from this timeframe are suspect, and best left as wallhangars...

 

What are you thinking? Just buy knives from the future or stick to knives before Bushcraft was a thing? 1940 or so?

 

You worry a lot about this stuff don't you...

Especially for a guy who admits he has BROKEN many knives by using them for things they were never meant to do.

So basically, you're willing to do a non-knife task to the point of breaking a knife, and then do that same non-knife task over and over again, and keep breaking "many" knives. However, if someone uses a knife that is designed to tolerate batonning (say, a Busse, or Becker, or some other such outdoor oriented knife) your big concern is that there is some magical built up stress in the knife that's going to come out generations down the road...

 

Eh? I think ‘bushcraft’ has been around since before we learned to make bronze.

I know some older guys, one of them a very well known outdoorsman, who say they have never ‘batonned’ with a knife. But ask them if they have used a knife to split small kindling and they look at you as if to say, “Of course, why do ask?!” I think a lot of guys, myself included, find the whole Nut’n’fancy thing a little bit sad and a little bit funny at the same time, and it is the plethora of bad YouTube videos that creates the animosity.

Take a big old knotty log, select your biggest baddest blade (NB never an actual bushcraft type knife), apply your WD40 - every hiker should always carry some , whale on the oversized knife ineffectually with a dirty great club, swear as your huge manly knife gets stuck in a knot, sweat unhealthily and try to moderate your breathing for the audience as you fail to free the trapped knife, cut to finished kindling/broken knife.

 

[exasperated exhalation] Not this again.

 

...what? Most knives are made of steel, the same or similar to steels that tools are made with. Not to mention, you're going to have to pardon me because I couldn't care less* what someone "hundreds of years" from now thinks about our knives and knife hobby. Also, there are literally thousands of members on this site who could post up knives that they've used to baton with for many, many years (I'm one of them), and those knives are as stout today as the first day they were taken out of the box. I do not believe your viewpoint holds water, sorry man.


*OP, take notes.

 

On rare occasion when I baton, I don’t use the same technique that may you tubers use when reviewing a knife. I don’t baton a 6” log with a 6.2” blade.
I also don’t have to swing the baton with the force of Paul Bunyan to get through a reasonably sized piece of wood. You don’t have to pick the nastiest piece of the hardest wood that you can find either.

 

I wonder what the pioneers thought when they were using their Bowie knives to chop wood, fight Grizzly Bears, and remove bullets lol (I know just the movies). Were they worried what we would think of their knives in the far distant future? Really, how come there are 1000's of Bowie knives from that part of time that some how magically survived all those shenanigans.

 

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Something I like a lot that Ethan Becker points out in a lot in his videos regarding batoning, if you have to really work to baton through wood you selected the wrong piece of wood. Get something that isn't a knotty mess to baton your small tinder from instead of trying to baton through a sequoia stump. In a calorie deficient scenario it's actually an important concept because you're wasting a lot of energy beating the hell out of something for no reason when there's something reasonable to baton elsewhere. Put the knotty mess on the fire after it's started, get something else to start the fire.