BR vs Hatchet

[kdleung]

Battle Rat vs a walmart hatchet. Which will chop firewood better?

I know a hatchet is designed to chop firewood, but the walmart hatchet is really really bad. Alot of people recommend the battle rat for chopping, but will it out perform a hatchet, a tool specifically designed for chopping?

 

[Andrew Lynch]

Yes, the BR will probably outchop a crappy hatchet. Most cheap hatchets have edge profiles that are geared towards hammering and smashing.

 

[TIR]

I do not own any Swamp Rat knives at all but I do own alot of large blades like the BR and can say that for me a large flat ground blade easily outperforms the gransfor and fiskar hatchets that I own. The main reason being is I always wear gloves while chopping and the hatchet handles are not as grippy with the gloves on. The fiskar has a plastic handle and has went flying out of my hand before, obviously chasing a hatchet is a scary and time consuming process. The gransor with it's wooden handle doesn't go flying but I have to regrip it alot. The knife handles I have found to of coarse be designed to incorporate grip retention and if you do alot of chopping in one setting you'll appreciate when you start to get tired. The flat ground blades really cut deep, I like them alot. The Swamp Rat line has a great rep. and warranty and they are cheap enough you won't feel bad hitting rocks and wire while clearing brush.

 

[t1mpani]

A large knife will outchop a hatchet on brush and light branches up until they get to be about 3" thick, or so, and then the hatchet pulls ahead. The reason for this is that a knife is balanced more naturally for controlled swings and can be used with precision much more easily. However, once your cutting target starts getting too wide, the knife falls behind, because its long edge contacting the wide target greatly expands the contact area that will absorb the force of your blow, making penetration suffer. This same thing will happen if you're chopping a 2X4--if you chop at its edge, you'll go through it quickly. If you lay it down flat and chop at its side, your knife won't bite nearly as deep.

So, for brushwork, a big knife or machete are the way to go. For heavier stuff, you want your force concentrated in the heavier-but-smaller axe or hatchet bit. This assumes a sharp bit, of course. Even the Walmart ones can be made sharp, but you'd better also buy a file and be prepared to move some metal. Or, you can just buy a Bruks.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Note that on larger wood, the lower penetration of the longer blade is not always a detriment. Realize that while the penetration is reduced in depth, it is increased in width over the axe.

Thus for example if you are cutting six inch pine with a BR, you make one cut per side on the v-notch and get say 1" of penetration, with a decent hatchet you get 2" per hit, but it takes four hits as each hit only makes a three inch long cut. In four hits with the BR you get two inches of penetration as well and thus both ideally chop at the same speed.

There are a few complications however, first off all it is somewhat easier to align up axe hits across than it is to place the knife hits in the same place, as the axe hits don't need to be quite as precise, but if the blade hits are even a small distance apart the penetration doesn't add up, you just get what is called a stepping pattern.

Secondly, the inherent lower penetration makes the axe likely to be more fluid in the wood, and have a greater tendancy to break the wood clear, thus it can work with bigger notches. How much of this is a factor depend on the nature of the wood.

On soft woods like pine, a stick would have to be massive before a BR would not be efficent, you are looking at trees ~300 lbs. Most shelter/fire sized wood is 3-4" thick and only 75-100 lbs.

Remember that wood weight goes as thickness cubed, so if you double the width, the weight almost goes up by a factor of 10, so trees get difficult to move fast.

Where hatchets come in well is working on really dense wood, and/or knotty wood. I would not mind chewing through a 6" pine with a BR, but would want a hatchet on spruce, especially if knotty. If you have to work on large trees with large blades then work on angles so as to reduce the profile of the blade presented to the wood. So when bucking, lean slightly over the log and v-notch the far side, then move back a little then v-notch the front side, then v-notch out the middle.

-Cliff