Batoning with a rock?

I agree, if there are no sticks for a baton, what is he trying to get through?
 
myright said:
So I've noticed time and time again that Bear Grylls uses a rock to baton with. I know it's Bear and all and we all have our opinions of him but my question is has anyone actually done this before? What kind of damage occurs to the knife and what situation would warrant actually using a rock?
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Ive never batoned with a rock before, nor do i have any plans of doing so, but i dont think any of my blades would suffer a catastrophic failure if i did it in an emergency. Maybe the spine would get dinged up, but thats about it. If Bear's Gerber Gator can take the abuse, then im sure my TAK, BK2 or F1 can take it too.

I cant really see what that situatioun would be though, cause as others state, if theres firewood to baton then theres wood to be used as a baton.

Only situation i can think of is perhaps, if i was stranded somewhere with nothing but manmade materials around me, ie. no forests/wood, and the only firewood available was in a construction of some sorts...maybe a solid wooden door or table, maybe that would warrant using a rock to make the intitial splits? :confused:
 
myright said:
So I've noticed time and time again that Bear Grylls uses a rock to baton with. I know it's Bear and all and we all have our opinions of him but my question is has anyone actually done this before? What kind of damage occurs to the knife and what situation would warrant actually using a rock?
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I really don't think the man is stupid...he's making more money than me I'm sure. But...if you have wood to split... Maybe he just likes the sound....
 
surely the wood your trying to split is not the only piece of wood in a forrest....but in a survival stituation..I bet your knife is the only good knife in the forrest and I bet you will feel like a dummy when you booger up or break a very important part of your gear...then what?( knap stone knife to smack with another bit of stone?) I would just walk around for 3 sec and find another bit of wood to wack it with..and if you cant do that then why are you splittng wood in the first place...tv is tv....your survival depends on your gear why brake it?
 
There seems to be a consensus that you only batton wood. Therefore if you need to batton, wood is already available.

A couple of questions to stimulate discussion.

Is wood the only thing that might need battoning in a survival situation?

And if not...

Do all environments have trees or shrubs & therefore wood available to use as a batton?




Kind regards
Mick
 
1) So fare I've never seen a tread about a knife that actually broke using a rock to baton, never seen any pic's of it either. Only people who never done it, saying not to do it.

2) I've never seen Bear splitting any wood using a rock-baton, I've only seen him baton cross-grain with a rock and a knife, not to make fire wood, but something else (I think it was a raft or something like that) Point being it was not dry hard wood he was battoning.

I'm not saying using a rock baton is good for your knife, only that I've not seen any thing to back up the "fact" it is a bad idea.

Anyone have any pics or something to back up the "stupid idea" concept ?
 
SouthernCross said:
There seems to be a consensus that you only batton wood. Therefore if you need to batton, wood is already available.

A couple of questions to stimulate discussion.

Is wood the only thing that might need battoning in a survival situation?

And if not...

Do all environments have trees or shrubs & therefore wood available to use as a batton?




Kind regards
Mick
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Thanks for pointing that out Mick, I hadn't really thought about it like that. No, wood isn't the only thing...just the most common I guess. One may very well need to "baton" a knife through ice to get to water. or through frozen ground to get to tubers and such. In such a case if there is no wood around and a rock is handy I'll definitely be smacking my knife with a rock that's for sure.

.
 
i agree with the statement about if you have wood to baton you have wood to baton with...your knife could be tied directly to you surviving that situation, why risk breaking/damaging it?
 
SouthernCross said:
There seems to be a consensus that you only batton wood. Therefore if you need to batton, wood is already available.

A couple of questions to stimulate discussion.

Is wood the only thing that might need battoning in a survival situation?

And if not...

Do all environments have trees or shrubs & therefore wood available to use as a batton?




Kind regards
Mick
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Yup - someone else here mentioned they baton when dressing game and I'm sure there many other different reasons for batoning.

My BK9 has dings on the spine because my brother decided to baton a 2x4 using a hammer on the back of my knife. I should get some pics so you can see what happened to it. It's pretty well dinged up good on the spine but did not impact the knife's ability to cut at all in in the slightest bit.

The epsiode that sparked this discussion was the one in Vietname when he was batoning bamboo for water so he was notching the end of a bamboo section to get the water out. I guess it is quite possible that there was no other wood around but it was a forest after all..... :confused:

I appreciate all the honest feedback and discussion.
 
Exactly! When you didn't buy the gear with your own hard earned cash and have no wories about replacing it it's easy to do stupid crap with your gear.

Unless no other option exists, which seems impossible, using a rock is pure stupididty.

vector001 said:
he also never seems to use the same knife twice....

vec
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Some good posts!
First off, I think Bear Grylls is a genius, and a real survivalist. He does a lot of extreme stuff, but it is only coz he wants to rock it! He enjoys the extreme! plus he makes money off something many of us would do for fun.

Then there is the rock issue. I think that unless somebody is going to baton a whole lot of wood or has no immediate access to a fine baton, he may (or may not) use a rock. If one brings a knife that can handle it, a rock is not a bad baton. Not to say it's better, but different situations call for different actions.

I remember I had to baton my Spyderco Military with a rock pretty hard once. I know its "stupid", blah blah blah, but I had to do it! on the spot, with no wooden baton available. The knife did suffer minor (aesthetic) damage on the spine, but handled the task at hand. This Military is still being EDCed and used hard on daily basis.
Now you all got to agree, that if a thin knofe like that can take some batonning, an expensive carbon blade or laminated steel should do just fine.

But then again, it all comes down to what matters the most at the moment.
Keeping your gear tidy, "babying" it with a wooden baton, or simply save time, not give a cr@# and baton the hell out of it with a rock!
Also, I think that when Splitting wood, the wooden baton would be even more efficient. But batonning Bear Grylls style (cross-grain+rock) is an easy task after all.

Bottom line, if you have a wooden baton available, USE IT. If not, use a rock. Simple as that.
One of the biggest parts about survival, is using anything one could possibly use, in order to live through a bad situation. Not just having to baton for firewood.

Cheers :thumbup:
 
I've batoned with a rock before. I was cleaning a deer and needed to bust through some bone, picked up the rock that was in a convenient location right next to me, and pounded right through it. No ill effects on the knife, however I wouldn't consider it normal use of a knife at all.
 
I dislike Bear as much as the next guy, but I agree with a handful of posters here who have stated that some of ya'll are WAY too quick to jump to conclusions that using a rock is always an incredibly stupid idea.


I can envision a number of situations where a rock would be the only baton available - all of them very unlikely to actually happen to me, but none outside the realm of possibility.


I am generally irritated by people who speak in absolutes - "you should NEVER baton with a rock", "you should NEVER go into the woods without a knife", "you should ALWAYS carry at least three ways to make fire", blah blah blah. Hard and fast rules are a good way to get complacent and trust the rules rather than your own mind. Give me the knowledge to make an informed decision any day, instead of a nice little list of the "proper" way to do something.
 
MustardMan said:
I can envision a number of situations where a rock would be the only baton available - all of them very unlikely to actually happen to me, but none outside the realm of possibility.
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I agree, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Is there some scenario where the rock baton is the only way? I guess so. Maybe a deserted island with one coconut and a rock. And you left your boots back on the sinking ship. But I'd work pretty hard to find another means to open that nut before I hit my knife with a rock.

My concern is that a rock will impart a more significant shock to the steel. It's a more inelastic collision than one that occurs when you use your boot or a stick to baton. I'm not so much concerned about cosmetic dings (I've dinged knives with wooden batons), but rather breaking the knife with the shock. My understanding is that steel is essentially a crystalline metal alloy. Shock and crystal don't seem to work together so well. I saw Bear do it on TV, and the knife came out OK. And it seemed like a remarkably bad idea at the time, I think I actually winced....

So Mustard, in what scenarios do you imagine using a rock to smack your knife?
 
I would never recommend using a rock as a baton. But, if it is going to be done, be careful with the rock. sandstone I could see. most granite that you can pick up is already decomposed and probably won't last. some rock types will give you nice flint shards in your arm and face!

For the knife- if the spine is fully drawn you won't break the knife, but you might, if the rock is hard enough, ding up the spine nicely.

You could always srap the rock in a shirt or something, too.

Overall I agree- batoning wood means wood is around. SO use the wood!

edit: stressing. I don't think it's a wise idea or appropriate!!!!!! But I don't see a 15n20 or well tempered 5160 blade cracking. I just don't see the point to it.
 
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It sounds like in this instance, Bear was batoning bamboo. Maybe all of the "wood" available was bamboo? In which case, I would think a bamboo baton isn't going to last very long.

In that circumstance, maybe a boot would've been better, but if it's in the SAS survival handbook, I'm sure he was trained that a rock would work. Not ideal, but adapt and overcome, I guess.
 
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