Cliff Stamp
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- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
I have long been of the viewpoint to favor chopping tools over most saws for survival simply because saws are not usually as robust and thus in high stress situations they can be a concern. It only takes one bad push to crack a lot of the really nice folding saws in half which has a dramatic effect on its utility. In contrast, with a decent rugged fixed blade, or integral (synthetic) hatchet, it can take a very high level of misuse and unless you intentionally try to break it, the blade will pretty much handle even a very aggressive novice.
However recently I was doing some more night work and it struck me that chopping was really difficult in the dark. Now it might seem obvious to suggest to just wait until it is morning, but would you really want to sit all night with no shelter or fire. I then got to thinking about visual damage which isn't that unreasonable given a crash or similar, or even just thinking about people with severe limitations such as really high powered glasses. I wear glasses, but they are not so extensive so as to actually impair any work I would do wood craft wise if I had them off. However it still was of interest to me to explore the issue from an injury viewpoint which I have done before by taping up fingers, an arm, etc.. I went into the woods with my brother and then put on a blindfold and tried to do some simple tasks.
First off all it became obvious that it sucks pretty bad to be blind and I realized that there are some things I have no idea how how to deal with. How do you prevent being mangled by a wideo maker for example, which is just a large dead limb in a tree. My brother obviously checked but with severely damaged vision you could easily miss one and then heavy impacts or the felling of the tree could disloge it, or simply drop another tree which is leaning against the one being cut. Of course you can minimize the risk by sticking with small and isolated wood, but it still seems very risky to me because the tree could be supporting a heavy windblow tree which is far away from the base of the tree you are felling.
I found it sort of surprising though that I knew where my off hand was and could thus direct the tree while I was "chopping" it with a variety of implements. I was using a wonderbar and hammer to simulate a parang and hatchet respectively. It was no problem to "cut" a notch and fell the tree, but actually getting a well formed hinge was difficult. I tried a light maul for an axe but it was very difficult and I would never risk glances. However a saw easily blew past the "blades". I used an actual saw and it was no problem and I easily made clean cuts and then limbed it and cut the tree into rounds and then split it with partial cuts. Now it was much slower than using a blade/hatchet without the blindfold, but with impaired vision the saw was radically the least effected and thus has a major advantage for such situations.
Some other notes, I found it difficult to keep track of things. For example normally I just pop down a few saplings, throw them in one pile, throw the limbs in another and them assemble them into a coherent structure. Try doing this when you can't see anything and see just how long it takes. Literally minutes turns into a hour. Putting on the layers for example and making sure there are no significant holes is easy when you can see, very time consuming when you can't. Or even just finding the basic site and decent setup. I also found it easy to get lost so I had a number of small sticks which I pegged into the ground which all pointed towards each other and I notched to show direction, basically they were cut on the outside of the boundry, so a stick with a notch on the left marked I should go right to stay inside the working region.
Anyway this is a pretty radical example of a survival situation, but it again inforced for me just how critical light is and how important it is to make the most of falling light in the evening in such a situation (or batteries etc.).
-Cliff
However recently I was doing some more night work and it struck me that chopping was really difficult in the dark. Now it might seem obvious to suggest to just wait until it is morning, but would you really want to sit all night with no shelter or fire. I then got to thinking about visual damage which isn't that unreasonable given a crash or similar, or even just thinking about people with severe limitations such as really high powered glasses. I wear glasses, but they are not so extensive so as to actually impair any work I would do wood craft wise if I had them off. However it still was of interest to me to explore the issue from an injury viewpoint which I have done before by taping up fingers, an arm, etc.. I went into the woods with my brother and then put on a blindfold and tried to do some simple tasks.
First off all it became obvious that it sucks pretty bad to be blind and I realized that there are some things I have no idea how how to deal with. How do you prevent being mangled by a wideo maker for example, which is just a large dead limb in a tree. My brother obviously checked but with severely damaged vision you could easily miss one and then heavy impacts or the felling of the tree could disloge it, or simply drop another tree which is leaning against the one being cut. Of course you can minimize the risk by sticking with small and isolated wood, but it still seems very risky to me because the tree could be supporting a heavy windblow tree which is far away from the base of the tree you are felling.
I found it sort of surprising though that I knew where my off hand was and could thus direct the tree while I was "chopping" it with a variety of implements. I was using a wonderbar and hammer to simulate a parang and hatchet respectively. It was no problem to "cut" a notch and fell the tree, but actually getting a well formed hinge was difficult. I tried a light maul for an axe but it was very difficult and I would never risk glances. However a saw easily blew past the "blades". I used an actual saw and it was no problem and I easily made clean cuts and then limbed it and cut the tree into rounds and then split it with partial cuts. Now it was much slower than using a blade/hatchet without the blindfold, but with impaired vision the saw was radically the least effected and thus has a major advantage for such situations.
Some other notes, I found it difficult to keep track of things. For example normally I just pop down a few saplings, throw them in one pile, throw the limbs in another and them assemble them into a coherent structure. Try doing this when you can't see anything and see just how long it takes. Literally minutes turns into a hour. Putting on the layers for example and making sure there are no significant holes is easy when you can see, very time consuming when you can't. Or even just finding the basic site and decent setup. I also found it easy to get lost so I had a number of small sticks which I pegged into the ground which all pointed towards each other and I notched to show direction, basically they were cut on the outside of the boundry, so a stick with a notch on the left marked I should go right to stay inside the working region.
Anyway this is a pretty radical example of a survival situation, but it again inforced for me just how critical light is and how important it is to make the most of falling light in the evening in such a situation (or batteries etc.).
-Cliff
