Discuss: Ebay Mistakes vs Quality Budget Knives, Batoning

@GatorFlash1 The obsession with batoning is a bushcraft thing, it's not like I'm splitting my firewood at home with a knife (well, this one time was just practice)... Bushcraft= surviving in the wilderness with the bare essentials. The less you have to carry and pack around the better. An axe is huge and heavy. But I've come 'round to the opinion that high impact batoning is knife abuse and unneccessary. I do like to find old axeheads and fit a handle to them and reprofile/sharpen as needed 😊 but they stay at home, can't justify bringing an axe in on my back. Again I've been rethinking strategies, and so even a lighter hatchet may be overkill for my needs.
 
Smoothy - If an axe is too heavy to carry, and they don't weigh more than about 5 lbs, then get a hatchet that weighs 1-2 lbs, and is easy to carry. I don't understand the bushcraft thing. Isn't the goal to have pieces of wood that burn after you have started the fire with kindling? I had five acres of wood behind my house and split a ton of wood by hand after cutting it into slabs with my chainsaw. I've done a lot of hiking and camping and have never felt the need to bash my Spyderco Gayle Bradley , or any other knife, into a slab of wood in order to split it, and my GB has some serious steel.

 
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SmoothLikePowerSteering said:
Bushcraft= surviving in the wilderness with the bare essentials.
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.......... *I* (just me) would argue that "Bushcraft" is more about doing things in a primitive/traditional way than what we loosely call "survival". If I am trying to "survive" then I am probably not going to spend the time and energy carving myself out a a cup/bowl and dinner set, I am going to conserve that time energy for food/water/shelter/fire. Notching wood for building shelter/traps etc, sure, beating my only blade through a great lump of wood to make it smaller just to burn it, hell no. Have I "batoned" for fun and entertainment with a knife, sure, will I again, sure. Did/would I if my life depend on it probably not without a highly specific set of circumstances. If I need firewood I collect deadfall and use that to get a start and just add the hole bloody block, it will burn.
 
GatorFlash1 said:
Smoothy - If an axe is too heavy to carry, and they don't weigh more than about 5 lbs, then get a hatchet that weighs 1-2 lbs, and is easy to carry. I don't understand the bushcraft thing. Isn't the goal to have pieces of wood that burn after you have started the fire with kindling? I had five acres of wood behind my house and split a ton of wood by hand after cutting it into slabs with my chainsaw. I've done a lot of hiking and camping and have never felt the need to bash my Spyderco Gayle Bradley , or any other knife, into a slab of wood in order to split it, and my GB has some serious steel.

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Kind of how I feel too. I learned how to use an axe before I learned to ride a bike, but I was never obsessed about wood grain on the handle the way a lot of people are these days. If it's not a run-out grain, I just don't care. I also see a bunch of numpties on the internet freaking out if they see someone is using an axe without proper eye protection, which is ridiculous. The only time I put on eye protection is when I'm using a sledge hammer and metal wedge, because you can get flecks of broken iron flying off the wedge after a lot of use.


When it comes to bushcraft, it's something I mostly did with an axe, brush clearing axe, or a machete. A lot of the things being done by the kids these days on YouTube with their survival knives are also things you can do with an axe or machete, including batoning. I always have a knife handy in the bush, but hikes longer than one night it means a smaller knife and no axe. Either of my lightweight Bradford Guardian 3 or Fallkniven F1 are likely more than enough knife for any excursion, but I've got a number of options if I feel like lugging around something bigger and heavier for the full bushcraft experience. I've learned a lot of tricks and techniques over the years with various tools, including knives, but have yet to do any batoning with one. I might end up doing some knife batoning one of these days, but it just hasn't happened yet.

 
My neck always itches when I see how someone rationalizes batonning, outside of accidentally breaking your axe, I really don't see it as something that anyone should go out of their way to do, besides acquiring the skill first off
One of my favorite "becauses" is "what happens if we get lost?" how does that explain anything? And how come you don't have an axe?
Another one I liked was "what if we didn't have an axe?" And why not? Did you head out to the continental divide ill-prepared?
Anyway--- even the ancient forest peoples used axes, when they needed to chop.
This is of course how I see it, if forcing a knife through wood is imperative to your survival, then by all means
 
SmoothLikePowerSteering said:
@GatorFlash1 The obsession with batoning is a bushcraft thing, it's not like I'm splitting my firewood at home with a knife (well, this one time was just practice)... Bushcraft= surviving in the wilderness with the bare essentials. The less you have to carry and pack around the better. An axe is huge and heavy. But I've come 'round to the opinion that high impact batoning is knife abuse and unneccessary. I do like to find old axeheads and fit a handle to them and reprofile/sharpen as needed 😊 but they stay at home, can't justify bringing an axe in on my back. Again I've been rethinking strategies, and so even a lighter hatchet may be overkill for my needs.
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Going to have to disagree on the heaviness of an axe, it really depends, if you are lugging around some heavy felling axe or something similar sure, but some models from granfors and hults aren't too heavy
 
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