Batoning?

+1 on batoning as a means preparing kindling.

Splitting big knotty logs with a knife is something I just don't get but I have split some larger pieces now and again.

There's not much I am afraid of doing with Becker BK-2; it's a knife that can baton, field dress and skin deer and also passes the test of all test for an all-purpose knife: it can make a PB&J sandwich!
 
I may be "bushcrafting" all wrong but I prefer to mostly breakdown wood with a small silky saw and a small hatchet . Once the wood is no longer safe to chop; I bassicly baton with the hatchet. It's only once the hatchet "batoning" becomes cumbersome, that I move to a knife. The largest item I would normally baton with a knife is about finger size. Outside of that the hatchet is simply faster and safer. Not really opposed to batoning, but I don't want to unnecessary dull or damage my knife and the hatchet batoning is faster and safer.
 
steelhog said:
I may be "bushcrafting" all wrong but I prefer to mostly breakdown wood with a small silky saw and a small hatchet . Once the wood is no longer safe to chop; I bassicly baton with the hatchet. It's only once the hatchet "batoning" becomes cumbersome, that I move to a knife. The largest item I would normally baton with a knife is about finger size. Outside of that the hatchet is simply faster and safer. Not really opposed to batoning, but I don't want to unnecessary dull or damage my knife and the hatchet batoning is faster and safer.
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Is there a Bush Crafting Manual somewhere? Are the Bushcraft police after you? ;-) Ive never even heard that term till about 15 years ago?.. We just called it Camping/backpacking. I’ve never batoned a single piece of wood. I was taught by my grandfather years ago how to use a small hatchet & saw.
 
Where would a guy find wood that has been cut with a chainsaw in the woods in a “survival situation”? The odds of finding wood that is 6 or 8 inches in diameter with perfectly cut ends just laying around on the trail is highly
unlikely.That’s what makes most exercises of that type not relevant in my opinion.
 
For those of you using a hatchet/axe and saw, that’s great that you feel comfortable using them. While I own them, I have never been properly taught how to use the combination for splitting wood. I feel less comfortable and I know I am putting myself at greater risk for injury.
For my firewood purposes while hiking or camping, I am not using huge logs—I use small downed branches. I feel exponentially more safe chopping wrist-size limbs and batonning for tinder than a hatchet. I feel more accurate and can work very quickly.
I use the BK9 and have used the very same knife without fail for 10 years. It sharpens easily and at a fraction of the weight of needed combination of axes, hatchets, and saws.
 
Before joining this forum, I had never heard of batoning. I have tried it a couple of times with different knives, but never had occasion to do it in real life. When I was doing a lot of motorcycle camping, we relied on the desert candle* method, and didn’t need much in the way of kindling.

Still, I made my boy try it just the once with the Skrama I gave him. He played along to humor me, but he uses a splitting maul, and starts his fires with a propane torch. The Skrama he keeps under the bar in his blind pig.

Still, those camping knife videos would seem pretty skimpy if you took out all the batoning demonstrations.
 
slyraven said:
I think its natural and ok to take an item to its limits, just to know its limits. I do not think, however, that batoning is the end all be all test. It does have its use, it does, in the end, show which knife can stand up to a brutal beating if you need a knife that can stand up to a brutal beating. There are lots of knives that fail the test rather quickly yet market themselves as tough and on the flip side, many cheap knives have passed the batoning test..so its not a useless test by any means but also not indicative of a knife's quality.
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Risking failure is not acceptable unless you simply don't care if you break a knife. Pushing a knife to "it's limits" infers that you will break them.

bush-haus bush-haus You baton a hatchet the same way you baton a knife. There is little danger. And if you choose, you can use a lot more force.
 
How about one of them ugly *** slab o' steel tom brown trackers?

I bet you could baton that through a log using a small sledge hammer
 
I’m into ultra-compact/-light camping and deep concealment EDC - I just can’t justify axes and fixed blades.

I regularly use my hard-use folders for starting splits. As long as you keep to centered batoning on start cuts (ie, blade spine above the wood) then there is very little impact/pressure on a folder’s lock, and you can baton locked or unlocked (if worried about it).

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schwep said:
R reppans . Good technique. How much does that chainsaw weigh? Much less than a small folding saw?
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I only have the Bahco Laplander to compare. 24” chainsaw is 4.5oz while Bahco is 6.7oz, and the chain is ~1/3 the pack size (can nearly hide it inside my med size fist). Definitely avoid the versions with only one cutting tooth on every third link (which most versions are) - they take 3x as long to cut anything.
 
reppans said:
I only have the Bahco Laplander to compare. 24” chainsaw is 4.5oz while Bahco is 6.7oz, and the chain is ~1/3 the pack size (can nearly hide it inside my med size fist). Definitely avoid the versions with only one cutting tooth on every third link (which most versions are) - they take 3x as long to cut anything.
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Interesting. What is the largest size wood you tend to saw with it, in real life (not the maximum possible but what you use to make a fire or a shelter)?
 
schwep said:
Interesting. What is the largest size wood you tend to saw with it, in real life (not the maximum possible but what you use to make a fire or a shelter)?
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I timed a 4.5” soft wood (pine) cut, and it took 20 secs/felt pretty easy, so I’d say 6-7” diameter for realistic max w/soft wood. Hard woods like oak, I’d go smaller - also my carry blades are ~4” max so generally keep below that for splitting.
 
Wether you are putting your knife at risc by batoning with it, depends on which knife you are using.

Busse has been mentioned a few times in this thread. If you are using your Busse batoning, you are not putting your knife at risc. That knife will take any amount of batoning you decide to subject it to.
Same knife however, will perform poorly at more delicate tasks.

If you decide to use your Adventure Sworn or Fiddleback, it is an other story.
Hold back on the batoning, and enjoy the knives for their abilities at more delicate tasks.
 
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