battoning your survival knife

I think the end of the world will come about before I break my Busse with a piece of wood. Buy a good fixed blade and you have nothing to worry about.
 
Here's a great video by IAwoodsman demonstrating the "one stick fire" method utilizing a baton.

[youtube]grWSLbl19Ns[/youtube]

and another.

[youtube]c90jBC31lrU[/youtube]
 
Utican said:
Like fmajor said it is unnecessary in true survival situation, now to start a fire in wet seams like reasonable explanation and I will try and do just that, to split firewood is silly, make star fire, the only one you should do in a survival situation in my opinion, I was thought that by a man that teaches survival to all airforce troops in us, so yeah I take he knows what's he saying
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Hi there.

Could you do us a favour and edit your posts with an eye to punctuation and sentence structure? It would make them a bit easier to follow.

With regards to batoning, I think that the practicality of the skill varies by region. In a dry climate, it is unlikely that you will need to baton through thick wood to get at dry material to burn on a regular basis. If, however, you are hiking in a damp climate (Pacific coast, for example) or a snowy area, it is likely that you will have to process your wood in some fashion before you have good fire-making material. Batoning can be useful in these situations.

If done correctly, it should pose no risk to a quality fixed blade knife.

I find that it can also come in handy when you don't want to make a large fire. Let's say you have some tinder, not much kindling, and a log, and you want to make a fire to boil water for a meal. You could wander about and scrounge for enough kindling to build a fire large enough to get the log going. Or, alternatively, you could just baton through the log and create viable kindling-sized pieces for your small fire. I did this a few weekends ago. Was it a survival situation? Absolutely not. Did I want a cup of coffee? Sure did. Batoning through a log came in handy at that time. It would have been completely impractical for me to attempt to get the whole log going in once piece.

All the best,

- Mike
 
Utican said:
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?
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Any fixed blade worth a crap should be able to be be batonned properly to process wood. It's not a cheap trick, it's a useful skill. Knives don't even have to be expensive... just made well. I've batonned a 10 dollar mora a thousand times.
 
Utican said:
Sorry English is not my native language and typing on the phone does not help either
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haha, in that case I imagine your forgiven :P.


I live in oregon.. and some friends of mine and I hiked into some local forest to pitch camp for a few days on possibly the worse weekend weather wise since winter!.. It rained at least a few inches over night.. The river we were near raised 2 or so on its own..

The only way to find dry wood was to baton through some 4-6" logs shooting for the core. We would have been fireless if we hadn't done this.
Heck, there weren't even any ash trees around, and birch doesn't seem to be anywhere around here.. Once we got it going really really well, we were able to burn some of the smaller wet logs found under dead fall, or standing..
 
Not only are split wood fires applicable in the rain-it's a great way to get a sustainable raging hot fire going fast when it's cold, and builds a very solid coal base quickly. If you make camp post-dark, you need to get warm and get dinner cooking fast, (more of an issue in spring and fall when the days are shorter) a split wood fire is the quickest way to get a fire to the point where it's ready to cook-IE manageable flame and solid coal base.
 
I don't split wood that often with my knife. But I have.

Even in very wet situations I really haven't had the need to split anything larger than around 1" in order to get a fire going. But I've split enough 1" stuff to get it hot enough to where the larger peices would catch w/o splitting.

There is another skill or whatever you want to call it and it involves knowing where to look when it's wet to get stuff dry enough to burn without a lot of splitting.

There's also knowing how much small easy to catch stuff you need to get the larger stuff going.

But really you can split something that's 1" thick with nearly any knife.
 
Utican said:
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?
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Because it is a very useful skill.

I am no expert far from it. A fledgling novice really.

I have always loved knives, and when I started trying to find (my quest) for the perfect survival knife, I got a Sog Seal Pup, good knife. But I needed something bigger and badder, so I got a Gerber LMF, another good knife. Still I was not satisfied, bigger still, so I got a Ranger RD6, yea its a big, bad, @$$ knife......hmmm not real practical for where I live and the hiking, camping, and fishing that I do.
So I heard people talking on the forum about Mora's.
So I got a Mora 2000, not much to look at but I liked it. And wouldn't you know it has become my goto knife, It batons like a champ. All the knives I've bought do. But the Mora is light weight, small, easy to use, and practical.
I know I rambled a bit, but bottom line if you buy a good knife (steel) than battoning is a non issue. And from my own experience you don't need a massive RD6 to get it done.
Get out there with a decent knife, do some batonning and you'll wonder why you waited (worried) so long to do it.
 
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Yorkshire Boy said:
I often see people suggesting a hypothetical survival situation of been out in the woods in poor weather conditions and without other cutting tools. Surely if a person was going far enough away from other people, and at a time of year where bad weather could be reasonably expected then they would prepare themselves accordingly?
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There are many parts of the world particularly in my neck of the woods where the weather can be picture perfect one minute and hail storm the next. I saw a clip of Ray Mears in NZ where the weather can turn from sunny and warm to a blizzard within hours.

Sometimes no amount of gear will be enough if the S really hits the F. That's when knowledge comes into play
 
I have only had to baton once, and it wasn't for a fire. But, having read about, and practiced batonning under controlled circumstances, I was well prepared to do it.
My nephew and I were busting deer camp, and I was hunting downstream on a peninsula, maybe 2 miles away. We trolled down to get my blind out, and as we were pulling up the battery died. We got the blind broken down and loaded, and started paddling his 12ft. flatbottom into a rather brisk December headwind. A single paddle, (a sculling paddle at that) was just NOT cutting it.

After about 15-20 minutes and gaining maybe 300 yds. we pulled up, and all I had on me,(lesson learned even on the last day of camp, middle of the day, "just a quick trip and back" carry your gear!!) was my Camillus Heat. I grabbed a nice beaver stick baton and we had a 12-14 ft. pole cut in no time. I was cautious and slow going with it being a folder, but it did it with zero problems. The base was maybe 3.5" dia. and then limbed it with some well placed strikes as well.

Had that exact thing happened 15 yrs ago, I admit I would've been hunkered down slicing at that sapling with a short pocket knife for quite some time. Skills and practical application help alot. (even when my P.P.P. "prior proper planning", is out the window)

End result, we made it back just fine. Hugged the bank, and made good progress.
 
I agree battoning is a right a passage for any knife to be considered a good woods knife. If it cant handle battoning then it definatly isn't for me.
 
Kenon Rain said:
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..
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:D

golok.jpg
 
Yorkshire Boy said:
I often see people suggesting a hypothetical survival situation of been out in the woods in poor weather conditions and without other cutting tools. Surely if a person was going far enough away from other people, and at a time of year where bad weather could be reasonably expected then they would prepare themselves accordingly?
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Come on out to coastal BC for a visit.
Weather can change without warning, hypothermia is a risk at least 10 months of the year.
Very easy to wander off a popular day trail and find yourself alone.

Every year here we get literally dozens of people (many tourist) that get lost from a trail that get dozens of daily visitors walking by.
 
I am up in the desert so batoning is a non issue, when in the Sierra though, I still don't :D usually sticking to a five point (star) fire or a parallel fire. Neither seems to utilize a smaller half of a log like a teepee fire would.
 
Omg Twin blade thats what I'm talking about, heheh,Honestly that second video that Kurupdt posted showed some real skill and also demonstrated that you don't have to baton to even start fire in wet conditions. Man did it with what looked to be Duk-Duk folder. I guess to each its own , I'm convinced now that it has purpose but only in few select situations. The thing is I like to make knives that are good slicers and probably could not stand up to regular batoning without eventually breaking. Also where I grew up knife was respected and something you kept for long time , sometimes passed on, maybe that's why I feel like this is abuse. When I broke my first knife when I was 10 my parents did not buy me another I had to learn from my lesson and be knifeless for a while before they bought me another one. Now I can afford to break a knife or two but choose not to.

here is a link to my first puukko if you guys want to check it out

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=781050
 
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coyotebc said:
Come on out to coastal BC for a visit.
Weather can change without warning, hypothermia is a risk at least 10 months of the year.
Very easy to wander off a popular day trail and find yourself alone.

Every year here we get literally dozens of people (many tourist) that get lost from a trail that get dozens of daily visitors walking by.
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My point is that if a person goes hiking then they should carry appropriate gear, clothing, food and water.

Even in the summertime British weather can be variable, it's prudent to have a warm top and waterproofs. Just because it's sunny in the morning doesn't mean that by the afternoon it won't be cold, raining and windy.
 
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