Batoning with a rock?

I sometimes batton my knives down into fatwood stumps so that I can pry sections off.
I have found that much of the wood I try using as battons is rotten where I live and breaks after maybe two hits on the knife.
I have still yet to reach a point of frustration where I'd pick up and use a rock, if in a survival situation then for sure but not when I don't really need to !
 
CWL said:
I've done it once. Because of the angle and workspace I had with the tree root, all I could use was a rock.

Worked fine. Uglified the spine a bit, but the knife survived.
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I just hope you didn't use this one.:eek:
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Personally, I baton quite often. I think after scuffing the crap out the haft of that wonderful Snow and Neely Axe that Brian Andrews gave me that I recognize I'm just not very handy with an axe. Plus, I like using my knives. I use them often. I've gotten so conditioned to using my knives for batoning that I rarely think of using the other options.

I don't often find myself 3-d from nowhere where I go. I don't often find myself with just one knife on my person. Its easy to set up survival scenarios on paper, but until you are in a middle of one and nobody told you the pre-conditions, then there isn't much you can do about that. Sorry, I'm just not going to dunk myself in a cold stream to find out whether I can start a fire or not. I was 20 years old, twenty years ago...Thanks, but I served my stupid-youth time already.

What I can't understand is that after more than 3-years of batoning every knife I ever procurred and owned, from mora's to bucks to fancy dancy Wildertools, I never broke one. I never in the slightest damaged one of these knives batoning. Sure, I baton under safe conditions. Sure there were even times in difficult to split woods when I thought - this is dumb, I think I'll quit now and find another piece of wood. Yet, so many people insist this so hard on your knives. These past three years I had at least 30 knives come in and out of my doors, some kept some moved on. They all got batonned, except the spyderco military and folding saks. None were damaged. It must have been 100's perhaps 1000's of pieces of wood..None were damaged. I'd have to say the risk of breaking one of my blades by choosing to baton is low.

Really, the survival-scenario guys, I think have built up a phobia in their head about their knives spontaneously cracking in two. Ed Fowlers little quote about finding your bones with a pristine knife made crack the biggest smile of the day :D

P.S. being foolish and trying to follow Rick, I did use the spine of a couple of my blades to spark flint. That stuff scores the crap out of your spine!
 
KGD, come to the BC forests, in poor weather, get yourself lost, and ask yourself "do i really want to take a chance on batoning, even though i've never broken a knife yet?"

:)

in other words, whats your acceptable risk level?
 
I'm still wondering what conditions exist that have compelled people to baton with rocks or a metal pipe?

I just don't see it. Seems like some people are saying that batonning is completely unnecessary at all, let alone with a rock. But given that you are the batonning type, in what scenario would you pick up a rock and wail away? What survival task is so critical that you would make the decision to baton with a rock?

Edit: If I were trapped in a boat/plane/helo/truck, I'd consider using a pipe or chunk of something hard to use to baton my way out. Or if I had to baton through my own stuck leg and the only thing close to hand was a rock, I'd consider it then as well. Actually, that might be a bad idea, 'cause it could be tough to stop the bone from bleeding, better to use the sharp edge and take off the leg at a joint and use a TK.

And this thread would be really enhanced by some pictures of you guys batonning with rocks. Break out the steel and get smackin'....

(I'm trying to think of which of my knives I might donate to this lil' experiment.)
 
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Personally, I can't think of many situations that I would "have" to baton at all.
The fact that something is stupid under normal conditions doesn't mean it can't be necessary in a survival situation. If your boat is sinking and you're stuck in a cabin would you pry a hatch open with your knife? It might break.

I'm simply saying that I'm willing to do whatever I need to in order to survive. If I need to drive my knife through a steel door to survive I'll do it.
 
Rotte said:
I'm still wondering what conditions exist that have compelled people to baton with rocks or a metal pipe?
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So far, it looks like one tree root access issue where the size and angle.

And knife testing. Which can be deliberately abusive, after all.
 
Bushman5 said:
KGD, come to the BC forests, in poor weather, get yourself lost, and ask yourself "do i really want to take a chance on batoning, even though i've never broken a knife yet?"

:)

in other words, whats your acceptable risk level?
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Yes, acceptable risk. My experience tells me the probability is less than 0.001 and likely lower. Whats the risk of my falling into a survival situation in the first place? Its pretty low too, lets say less than 0.001 also. So the risk of my knife breaking while I'm in a survival situation? 0.001 x 0.001 = 1 in 1 million. The next big mac I eat is more likely to kill me.

Hey, I know there are other ways to break down wood. Not saying I wouldn't use other methods especially if I didn't have a knife. What I am saying is that I've gained a crap load of confidence in batoning because I do the activity so much. Maybe, I'll get nailed at some point but at this stage I sincerely doubt it unless I keep buying new, untested blades....Apart from one here or there, I'm kind of sticking to the ones I've got now.
 
protourist said:
Personally, I can't think of many situations that I would "have" to baton at all.
The fact that something is stupid under normal conditions doesn't mean it can't be necessary in a survival situation. If your boat is sinking and you're stuck in a cabin would you pry a hatch open with your knife? It might break.

I'm simply saying that I'm willing to do whatever I need to in order to survive. If I need to drive my knife through a steel door to survive I'll do it.
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fair enough, you in a cabin of a boat and need to get out NOW, thats completely understandable!

however, in the woods, one can resort to other means......EVEN in a survival situ. All it takes is THINKING, looking around and taking inventory of whats around you. Cold? no wood right this second? put on ALL your extra clothing, take off a shirt and wrap your head (99% of heat loss, thru the head!) or don a large garbage bag, or take your tarp, wrap yourself, and hold your lighter under you to warm up, or do jumping jacks for 15 minutes, then re-assess.

EDIT: yes i have a STRONG opinion against batoning. It stems from growing up where i was taught to treat my TOOLS with respect and care, and that a little care and TLC will keep those tools running forever. I have wrenches and other tools that are 3 generations old now, and they perform like they are designed. I have a 36 year old chainsaw with over 25,000 hours on it, because it was used with care and maintained and rebuilt with care. I dont abuse the tools that i RELY ON. A knife, is a tool that i rely on. There is no godamn way in Hades that i would EVER consider beating ont he knife with a rock (or even a wood piece) mushrooming the spine just to split wood. There is so many other options available to me. ADAPT IMPROVISE OVERCOME
 
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Rotte said:
I'm still wondering what conditions exist that have compelled people to baton with rocks or a metal pipe?
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I can't think of too many reasons....I just got lost in the usual trying to defend any type of batoning.

Personally, I think digging with your knife in rocky soils is much more likely to damage it but that is another issue.
 
Let's see...so it's ok to chop with a knife, to take say a .03" or so cross-section that tapers to nothing, by far the most fragile part of the knife, and slam it repeatedly into a piece of wood against the grain, but it's not ok to spread the intial load over a much greater area, tap it in along the grain, and use the blade's taper as a wedge to split the same piece of wood?
Where are all the anti-chopping crusaders to save us from ourselves?
 
OwenM said:
Let's see...so it's ok to chop with a knife, to take say a .03" or so cross-section that tapers to nothing, by far the most fragile part of the knife, and slam it repeatedly into a piece of wood against the grain, but it's not ok to spread the intial load over a much greater area, tap it in along the grain, and use the blade's taper as a wedge to split the same piece of wood?
Where are all the anti-chopping crusaders to save us from ourselves?
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You can actually get into some really nasty side forces in battoning for purposes of wood splitting. If the knife doesn't have the flexibility to take it you can snap it right away. (check out the old camp knife challenge thread for some scary flex pictures.).

Now, same would apply to chopping, but- in generally a chopping knife is going to be significantly larger than the minimum batoning knife. People are out batonning with 4 and 5 inch blades.

Battonning as a whole idea seems oddly controversial, and I don't really see why. It's not whaling on things in excess- though some people seems to operate on "excess or nothing!"- it's tapping, with as much force as needed to do the job, not more. Anyone who has used chisels for carving can understand this. (Even pitdog isn't using unecessary force. He has no desire to split his driveway)






HOW THE HELL DO YOU PROPERLY SPELL that, anyway?
 
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I know I'm getting a little off track here but I'm reading this and thinking I'd love to see some of your faces if you could watch what I put my SWKW Chopweiler through nearly every day !
Man I beat on that thing so hard using a gnarly maple club that my hand goes numb, like KGD I'm so used to using this method that I can split my daily firewood down to large, medium and small kindling all using this method far quicker and safer than using my axe !

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Bushman5 said:
all right Pitdog, you and me Bro! :D your knife against my axe. Chop off! :D
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Ha, Ha....I've no doubt someone that is well used to using an axe would beat me bro, although on the amount it takes to fill my bucket in the pics I really don't see how an axe could be much faster.
With an axe I'm forever standing the pieces back up again and once I'm trying to make the smaller stuff it becomes even harder !
 
pitdog said:
Ha, Ha....I've no doubt someone that is well used to using an axe would beat me bro, although on the amount it takes to fill my bucket in the pics I really don't see how an axe could be much faster.
With an axe I'm forever standing the pieces back up again and once I'm trying to make the smaller stuff it becomes even harder !
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spend some time in the woodlot with me Bro, you will be wielding an axe and wielding it fast. :cool: (and then you be posting about how knives actually really suck for woods craft!) :D
 
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