battoning your survival knife

U

Utican

Joined
Sep 18, 2010
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Its beyond me , why would you want to risk breaking your survival knife just to save time. I have broken a couple of knives as a kid and will never forget the feeling, cant even imagine doing it in survival situation. Why are there so many videos of guys doing this?
 
I guess I don't understand your question directly. I for one test any knife I bring into the bush, that 'test' of mine WILL include and is not limited to being beat to death in my backyard.. any properly heat treated steel in the likes of 1095 for example will take it no doubt.. I've had 1070 machete in a log and was whacking it as hard as I could to break it loose and it never failed..

I think when you were a kid you just had inferior knives and or metal...

NEVER chance a tool in the bush without giving it a good once over at home or on a short hike..

cya
 
I do this often. I feel a quality FIXED blade knife can handle it. I have been doing it a lot of years and have yet to break a knife doing it. I have seen knives get broke from doing it but this does not really sway me from doing it. If a knife can't handle being battoned then I don't want to trust that knife in survival situations. That is just me though.
 
aye, I don't see how you could break a fixed blade by battoning even..
hell, the other day on an outing with a few friends of mine I ended up battoning the handle of the camp knife I had built as well as the blade to get it out of a really stubborn knot..

everything held up fine..
 
Many of us don't consider batonning to be abuse. I expect all my knives to be able to split wood by batonning.
 
although my experience isn't quite as seasoned as a lot of you here, I have yet to break a knife by batoning it let a lone bushcraft..

I've even batoned an old 'sharp 440 stainless' in the snow on frozen wood and it held up just fine to get to dry wood to make a fire..
 
There's nothing really scary about it, battoning is just another woods technique. After seeing Mors baton his Mora, I'm more than confidant that any of my blades will not be hurt by it.
 
So its more like a test than something you would do in a survival situation, I get it now,im just saying that if you do it in survival situation the trade of making that cut a little faster by batoning rather than by just cutting it by slicing is trivial and not worth the risk to me, as a test it makes sense
 
Utican said:
So its more like a test than something you would do in a survival situation, I get it now,
Click to expand...

It is something most of us would do in a survival situation if needed. You don't have an axe, you're in a deciduous forest in late November, and throw in allot of rain. You need fire, but everything is wet, except maybe the inside of the downed wood you can find. You have no axe or saw, only your belt knife.

What to do.. Are you going to take the time and make a wedge in the cold wet weather, or just baton your knife through some wet downed wood to reveal the dry inner wood...
 
If it's not baton-able it's not a survival knife...it's just a knife, and of limited value (read practically useless) to me personally outside of a kitchen.
 
Utican said:
so you can get dry wood for tinder?
Click to expand...

That's one valid purpose.

Survival knives are tools meant for hard use. They're not fragile little newborn babies that need to be handled delicately, and kept swaddled in soft cloth, away from bright lights, loud noises, and chilly temperatures.
 
my Necker Brute has a flat on the spine that was described by the manufacturer as being specifically for batoning. the rest of the spinee has a swedge along most of the length... i guess to shave a little weight of the beast... er, brute.

Iz Turley (bindlestich) has a video where he batons with a Victorinox Farmer SAK, so it can be done with a slipjoint knife.

there are plenty of other knives, both production and custom that get regular batoning use without problem.

don't think i really want to do it with a Mora, or other stick or stub tang knives, including the USMC Ka-Bar... because eventually they may not be up to it, but they will probably do it for shorter periods without problem. how long will depend on your technique, the wood you're working on, the specific design and individual knife and other factors like the phase of the moon or what side of the bed you got up on, and if you woke up grumpy or let her sleep.

a quality, full tang knife of robust construction will probably never have a problem, but even good stuff can break. carry a backup.
 
how thick are the blades on a typical bushcraft knife and is full stick tang adequate or it has to be a true full tang
 
I regularly baton blades as thin as .06 inches and have yet to cause any significant edge wear, let alone significant damage, to a knife. Just because of negligence when it comes to technique and choice of tool doesn't mean the rest of us are wrong. It's not hard to baton around knots and obvious resin deposits... I really have no idea what the issue is. Maybe using impractical stainless steels or something... that I could see...
 
on spliting a 6 inch log I was thought in survival school to save energy and cut wood in a fire, you are not going to make furniture and planks in a survival situation,
 
in a real survival situation you wouldn't want to baton wood if possible as you're expending calories, you'd be more inclined to simply find fallen limbs you could break or chop with larger knife. But if you don't have the skill to baton and you're in a situation where that's the only way to get to fire wood and its going to be freezing you better have your act together.

try it for yourself, wear gloves though.. you don't want to end up like me with a punctured tendon in my finger..
 
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