Eric_Draven :
... what out of the box factory knife has the chopping capacity of a fresh from the factory Gransfors hatchet?
The Trailmaker from Marbles should get the same penetration on small wood (the axe face width) as it looks to be fully convex ground with no distinct thickening of the edge bevel from pictures I have seen. Valiant makes small Goloks in that size range as well which have fully convex ground blades with thin and acute angles.
The new Battle Mistress should be very close depending on the edge geometry, assuming it was the same as the SH one I have, it might even be slightly better as it might have more blade balance. The Battle Rat should be close as well assuming its geometry is similar to the Camp Tramp I have used.
By the way, I never even said that you could buy factory knives like this, just that an optomized wood working bowie could be made this way. In most cases the optomization is simply one of edge thickness which can be done by laying down a relief grind, under an hour with an aggressive hand stone, a few minutes with a belt grinder, about 10 minutes with pseudo-belt files if your endurance is high enough.
Name some real life chores (not theory, extrapolation, wild fantasy or some such) where a 7" knife is a better survival tool than a high quality Gransfors hatchet.
Clearing brush, gathering vegetation for construction, bedding and supplementary clothing, most food preperation outside of hammering, any deep cutting, digging in woods for tinder or food or construction materials, digging in soil to expose plant parts for food (or bugs), a lot of shaping and carving such as draw knife work, drilling holes with the tip, and most precise carving, ...
The axe of course does *much* better for cutting thick woods, splitting, and makes a much better makeshift hammer. It will also equal the bowie on shallow cuts as the edge geometries are similar in angle.
The bowie in general is also a lot more forgiving to abuse, which can be a consideration if it is not just you in the situation and your company may not have the same level of skill or knowledge. It is easy to break the handle on an axe if you are sloppy or just not familiar with the axe, but a bowie even one highly optomized can at most just see some edge impaction.
It is more than just mass, there is leverage, tip speed, and most important balance issues.
If you are hitting with the tip, the longer blade would have more of an advantage due to tip speed, however the length of the arc is the total distance from the center of the swing, which includes your arm, so the extra inches are actually a very small percentage of the radius of rotation. The balance and other issues do not have to be significantly different. Well leverage is, but if you have to do that much prying to free the wood, you are usually better off with multiple notches.
Comparing 7" to 10" knives is like comparing apples to watermelons. Nice way to skew the thread towards your point of view.
That comparion was made to show the difference in size that an axe needs to have to get such a quoted performance difference over a knife. As is often the case, the performance advantage of an axe is usually vastly over estimated as even the very best axe men in the world can not achieve such performed levels and the axes they use are more than slightly better than an Estwing.
The SFA easily outchops the Trailmaster, on at least a 2-1 margin
Yes, and that isn't even a hatchet. The above claim which I disagreed with would predict that you should in fact be about 6-8 to 1, assuming that you can get better pentration with the SFA than a hatchet.
marsupial :
... the idea being argued here is the point that a 9-10 in bowie with the right heft and geomwtry can out chop an Estwing axe.
If the bowie is optomized for wood cutting and the axe of similar size. Take a 2x4 sized piece of wood with your Estwing hatchet and see if you can cut it as fast as the ABS guys with their bowies. To make it a fair comparison use a decently hard wood to approximate the drying and pressure hardening that a 2x4 sees. I would be very suprised if you can equal it let alone out cut it by multiple times to one which would imply you were slicing the 2x4 with one hit.
-Cliff
