"Batoning"

Snakebreaker said:
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THAT^^^^^^^ is just amazing.
 
Back in the day, we used a froe but were heavily discouraged NOT to use any knife for the task of an axe or splitter. You certainly would not want to pound on the spine of a small knife with perhaps but a 1/8th inch of thickness. I have seen plenty of blades that were damaged by hammering into frozen steaks or other media. Batoning is more akin to using a knife as a wedge as we did when processing firewood. I seriously doubt that any knife is the preferable tool for efficient splitting of larger segments of hard wood, but these days, batoning seems to be in vogue.

Powerful knives like the Dogfather are built tough enough to withstand such pounding, but there are some logs out there that truly need the mass of an axe to negotiate. I am better with an properly tuned axe than a knife for splitting. There are old knots that defy even the best of us cutters.

In a pinch, the BM would be fine to use but for God's sake, don't make a mistake and swat your hand.
 
I find batoning large pieces of wood with a large blade easy, much easier than with a small hatchet. small pieces of wood are easy with a hatchet though
 
I enjoy sitting in front of the fire and clubbing (Mr. Becker's term) small slabs off of the damp logs & tossing them into the bed of coals.
I don't split entire logs, I just lop off chunks about 3" across & the length of the log.
It's like therapy...
 
To me the advantage of batoning is you are decreasing the amount of blunt force impact to the blade edge. I had a tree down on a piece of property and nothing in my vehicle except a sfno. Cut me about a 14" limb about the size of my arm and proceeded over the next hour to delimb the tree by batoning the blade through the limbs. It was much more effective than chopping would have been, and my blade edge although well worn afterwards, was unharmed, no nicks or anything. I used to think batoning was just blade abuse until i tried it. Your litteraly driving the blade through the wood instead of slamming your edge down every time. If you were making shelter in the boonies this would be my preferred method
 
fbusmc said:
To me the advantage of batoning is you are decreasing the amount of blunt force impact to the blade edge. I had a tree down on a piece of property and nothing in my vehicle except a sfno. Cut me about a 14" limb about the size of my arm and proceeded over the next hour to delimb the tree by batoning the blade through the limbs. It was much more effective than chopping would have been, and my blade edge although well worn afterwards, was unharmed, no nicks or anything. I used to think batoning was just blade abuse until i tried it. Your litteraly driving the blade through the wood instead of slamming your edge down every time. If you were making shelter in the boonies this would be my preferred method
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Good point. I usually hack limbs away, but the batoning method on branches and such is a good idea.
 
To add to the above, if like me your aim is 'approximate' when chopping, batoning is good because you place the knife where you want it to be and your aim is exact every time. It makes for much more efficient chopping if you're hitting the right place 100% of the time rather than taking two or three chops to do the job.
 
I've never been worried about damage to my INFI when batoning wood at all. I normally destroy my baton and spend time making another baton.
 
zombieassassin said:
I've never been worried about damage to my INFI when batoning wood at all. I normally destroy my baton and spend time making another baton.
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Ha ha.
Sometimes my baton gets tossed in the fire by my overzealous fire-feeder (my son).
 
I think we would all be remiss, if we did not remind OP and any others who are even thinking about batoning to liberally coat their blades before during and after batoning with WD-40. Heck even spray a little on the log while you’re at it.

There is nothing fancy about this technique, just spray the heck out of the WD-40 at any point during about batoning session like you have stock in the stuff. This will help reduce
“friction “ and stuff.
 
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