Batoning with a rock?

Bushman5 said:
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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LOL ! One of these days I will be sure to join the BC wrecking crew for an outing !;):thumbup:
 
protourist said:
I just hope you didn't use this one.:eek:
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Ha! protourist, I owe you a review still, and I did take pictures of me and the 8-lb Holiday prime rib roast I carved with it. But I haven't been able to find that camera ever since! Sorry bro!
 
koyote said:
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 n 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.
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Yeah, you've got to use some common sense. You can get into a knot, bugger up the edge, torque the blade. You can screw up a lot of your gear using it the wrong way, but I don't see batoning itself as a "wrong" way to use a knife.
I (gently)batoned a 3/32" AG Russell Deerhunter in AUS-8A through oak limbs almost as long as the blade just to see what would happen after reading one of Cliff's atrocities about batoning the same knife in all three available steels through nails. What happened was some wood got split. Tap, tap, tap.
I batoned my BK7 through the same log one of my buddies broke the bit of my GB Wildlife Hatchet off from beard to heel on, and used it in the same way as the sole tool for collecting large limbs from downed trees for 3 days, since I no longer had a hatchet.
My Busse Basic 9 was used to section a log a good 2 1/2ft. in diameter to burn in a barrel on a strike line with a 3lb. hammer for a baton. Was just screwing around, but we did want the wood. Knocked a chunk out of the edge of the spine with an off-center hit, but 8 years later, the knife is still functionally 100%.
Beating, however gently, the tip of a Deerhunter, and pounding even an overbuilt Busse's tip with an Engineer's hammer...sure those were probably examples of abuse, but I'm not advocating going to extremes in the woods, just relating that the knives could and did take things well beyond what some would expect.
Like most tools, I think a knife is more about the user, and that what you have isn't indicative of what you can do.
 
CWL said:
Ha! protourist, I owe you a review still, and I did take pictures of me and the 8-lb Holiday prime rib roast I carved with it. But I haven't been able to find that camera ever since! Sorry bro!
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Whenever I'm home and getting ready to grill, I picture that blade. I can practically feel it slicing in my dreams.:thumbup:
 
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I've just done a quick video of me battoning some wood for my fire tonight, I'll post it once it's loaded !
 
Removed till I figure out how to put video's on another way !
 
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I have split many truckloads of wood but I am a hatchet/ax man. Have been since before I started school.
 
I work a 20 dollar Collins Boy's Axe when I'm processing alot of wood, and my tomahawk collection is starting to look pretty impressive. I do believe splitting with an axe is easier in the long run, easier on your body, easier on the tool, than battoning. That said I've never been scared to baton my Ontario Machete, HEST, RC5, Becker or number of other knives, using primarily softwood to baton with.
 
:confused: I don't get all this talk about knife abuse and broken blades. :confused:

I test all my field tools very hard before I trust them fully.

This includes batoning, and generally my test batoning will be more abusive then what a knife will see in normal use.

I like to know any tool is up to the task I will use it for long before I need to depend on it in possibly difficult situation.




I can only guess that those who think it's some kind of abuse don't test their equipment like I do.




Big Mike
 
well I've had two instances with iffy outcomes when it comes to battoning. I hit a knot with my Ontario machete and twisted the edge of the blade minorly, not enough to affect its usefulness as a beater tool and it buffed out over time, and battoning through a big fat nail with an RC5, in which case the edge rolled minutely and I fixed it in three minutes with an arkansas stone. Other than that if you're using a quality high carbon steel with any sort of blade thickness light battoning isn't going to hurt your knife.
 
koyote said:
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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wailing :p

ETA: I've used my knives for chopping and whatnot, but honestly, Ive always gone out of my way to baton my knife(just a reason to use a new blade ya know lol).
 
MustardMan said:
Except, of course, that the myth that heat loss is mostly through your head has been thoroughly debunked, and its initial genesis was a poorly executed and interpreted study in the first place


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/17/medicalresearch-humanbehaviour
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Interesting !


On a tough hike I do appear to cool down quicker by removing my hat rather than rolling up my sleeves. Both would expose a similar amount of skin so according to that article both should cool the same eh ?:confused:
 
Bushman5 said:
your 500 miles from the nearest town of 20 people......you baton your knife......it breaks in half.........

now what?

:(
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I realize that this is only my second post, however I was under the assumption that this was a knife forum!?:D ; just messing with you guys...

but seriously:

Does no one carry a back up knife, with them? something light but sturdy, may not be as tough as your primary, but would work nonetheless.

I have also read the whole thread and realize that Bear Grills is Bear, and if he breaks a knife his crew probably has a spare waiting for him, or can helicopter one in.

And yes if the situation arises and you do happen to break your knife, would you not pick up the pieces and make use with what you had left, admittedly it would not be ideal, but surviving is not ideal in itself.

couldn't remember any one mentioning anything about a back up knife, so I thought I would throw it out there.
 
My wife likes to baton kitchen knives with a rock. The last time she did it, she was using my favorite chef's knife that has a very very thin edge, and batoned it through a ham bone. Let's just say that I took all of my good knives out of the kitchen drawer after that. And she still does not understand why I was upset about it.

Some of our older carbon steel kitchen knives, especially an Old Hickory carving knife that she had when I met her, have the spines flattened by years of this.
 
pitdog said:
Interesting !


On a tough hike I do appear to cool down quicker by removing my hat rather than rolling up my sleeves. Both would expose a similar amount of skin so according to that article both should cool the same eh ?:confused:
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Not exactly. Places with higher blood flow do lose heat faster, but not at the absurd levels that are generally claimed by the myth.

Perhaps more importantly, certain areas will make you "feel" cooler, due to density of nerves and nature of surrounding tissue as much as rate of heat loss.

In other words, a hat isn't the best way to prevent hypothermia, but taking that hat off can certainly make you feel more comfortable if you're hot. The perception of heat loss is not the same thing as the actual heat lost from your body. When it comes to regulating your core temperature, it's the second that matters.
 
ah no comment on that other than spend a winter up north without a hat and see how "de-bunked" that "myth" is. Wearing a warm hat is one of the first things SAR, Military, and EXPERTS in hypothermia management teach.

I for one if i remove my hat in cool weather, rain, or in the winter rapidly chill to the point of loss of limb control and basic motor skills, even with my core well warmed, well insulated and full of hot food and liquids. Its NOT just your core you need to keep warm.

borrow a FLIR camera and see how much heat radiates from the head when you remove a hat, and see how similar the core temps and the temps of your head are.


best another thread on the topic get started.
 
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