Do you really need to baton wood?

O

OmegaA

Joined
Feb 13, 2004
Messages
282
Just a thought: what do you need to baton piece of wood for?
I can find only one answer - if you want to make firedrill, then you want a piece of wood that is relatively flat.
For fire if you have a wet log and want to get inside it for dry piece - finding dry piece of woods seems to me a better option.
Make small pieces of wood - well, find smaller pieces of wood...
Is it not an overestimated requirement for knives?
 
You can't always find dry wood.
The battoning lets you get to the dry inside of the wood in a much faster and more efficient way than carving would.
Also, making a featherstick for kindling from the opened up piece of wood is so much easier and better than to do it from the outside of the piece of wood. Even if the piece of wood is dry to start with.

I agree, ther IS a lot of talk about battoning, but on the other hand battoning sure does make firemaking easier. Particularly if you don't have an axe with you...

/ Karl
 
When I try to think if I even was so desperate that I had to get dry wood from wet one, I just cannot remind any...
Wet wood? Well, take dry branch from a tree, remove the bark and here we go.
 
I've been to the Olympic National Forest, Northeast GA (spring/fall time) and around the headwaters of the Amazon (Southern Ecuador); all three places consisted of a very saturated environment. Sure, there's plenty of ways to find drier wood for small fires, but to get a big fire (necessary for backpacking with the kids and my wife's Tex-Mex chicken, rice and bean burritos:D ) going quickly, the only way is to batton decent sized logs to get expose the drier interior. For those in more severe wet climates where the "wet" is in the form of snow, big, long burning fires can mean life or death if you're wet or can't find/make decent shelter in time. Even when I used an axe, my small pack saw was only good for logs 6-8 inches in diameter, but just fine for a medium to large bladed knife to batton.

Battoning is not a requirement for every area, but should be a good requisite for any serious outdoors or "survival" knife.

ROCK6
 
Having an option to make things easier is always productive. Consider if you had a magical device which just split wood by pointing it, don't you think that would be useful to have? Most people that I know who are into woodcraft of any type would be very interested in such an item. Well a knife does that easily and much more besides. It is hard to argue "need" as that means you can't do without. It is hard to argue that you actually need a knife at all, it isn't like men could not survive without one.

-Cliff
 
Seems to me we go round and round on this topic about every 2 or 3 months. Someone comes in, questions the validity of batoning, the whole thing blows up, people site a bazillion examples of much more complex and involved ways to do the same job and in the end everyone agrees to disagree and baton if they want or not baton if they dont want.


I think that just about sums it up.
 
Batoning would never be my first choice BUT if I need to then I will.

It would be reassuring to know that my knife what ever type, model or manufacturer it is, can take it.
 
shotgunner11 said:
Seems to me we go round and round on this topic about every 2 or 3 months. Someone comes in, questions the validity of batoning, the whole thing blows up, people site a bazillion examples of much more complex and involved ways to do the same job and in the end everyone agrees to disagree and baton if they want or not baton if they dont want.


I think that just about sums it up.
Click to expand...

Will you please quit reading my mind? :(

Doc
 
I think a lot of people choose a knife that can baton wood intensely when they'd be better off choosing a knife that was more suited to something that they do more often.

About the only time I do it is to split small peices if it's really wet.

I split these peices to make a dry platform to build the fire in this wet fire ring.

cranberry5.jpg
 
Not being at all flip, I think the question compels an answer: I only need to baton wood [with a knife] when I need to do so.

In the many times I have been in the woods, the percentage of times I have needed to baton has been very small. HD has a point. But twice, it was critical to baton wood. Therefore, I carry a knife stout enough to baton.
 
The last two posts have helped my gain a better understanding :)
Thank you both. :thumbup:
I think that it is a good thing for me to try at home just in case I
ever need it. I don't really hike or camp out much , but I do enjoy
hunting in a fairly remote place alone .
Another good bit of knowledge to have out there , thanks to this great
forum . :D

Phil
 
Sometimes batonning wood is a little like shaving the hair off ones arm to show the knife is sharp... it can be a benchmark of what the knife is capable of doing should it be required to do so. Yes I do favor batonning because it works for me.
Bill
 
Battoning doesn't mean you have to go around
splitting logs... I normally batton smaller sized pieces
of wood. Sure takes a lot less time then
taking off all the bark when you want dry wood.
Most quality folders can handle battoning.
I've done it with a BM 710, Spydie Delica and a Kershaw Mini-Cyclone
to no ill effect on any of them.
 
I've never HAD to baton for drier wood, mostly because i always have something better than a little knife on me. But it's fun, and to me at least, batoning is a sort of "extreme testing". IF for whatever reason I need to do it, I feel better that it will survive.
 
There used to be a fellow who could tell you all you ever wanted to know about batoning but were afraid to ask. I think his name was Rodney King or something like that. :D
 
To sort of qualify my above statements... I usually don't
carry an ax. At most I'll carry a 7" fixed blade.
I usually go camping with a tent so I don't tend to need to
build shelters. A 3-4" folding knife pretty much fits the bill.
Back in the day I camped many a night with a Vic Explorer
and never had a need for anything bigger. But now I find
larger knives get the job don't quicker.
 
msiley said:
Battoning doesn't mean you have to go around
splitting logs... I normally batton smaller sized pieces
of wood. Sure takes a lot less time then
taking off all the bark when you want dry wood.
Most quality folders can handle battoning.
I've done it with a BM 710, Spydie Delica and a Kershaw Mini-Cyclone
to no ill effect on any of them.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

The knife in the pic is 3/32" thick.
 
Ugh. Axe not yet invented here in Wisconsin, so me need to split wood with knife. Ugh.
BatonBuddies.jpg


Har har, I couldn't resist. To baton, or not to baton. I baton a knife whenever I want to make bigger wood smaller, and I do not have an axe or a hatchet. That's my reason for batoning. And when I have a 14" hatchet, I'll baton that, too. I don't feel I need to split every single piece of wood I intend for the fire, but when split wood will come in handy, steel is laid upon wood and struck with another piece of wood. I do feel safer batoning wood out in the middle of nowhere as opposed to swinging a full-sized axe around, too. I never pack a full-sized axe into the field. That's just my personal choice.

To baton, or not to baton. It is sort of a dumb argument. Sort of like AR-15, or to not AR-15. 'Tis in the eye of the beholder, me thinks.
 
I`ve batoned through a piece of wood, a few times in my life.
One was simply to remove a 2" diameter small birch-tree that had grown across a rarely-used path in the woods of my parents. I used a Rat-3, and it did the job just perfectly.
The other was to split up some bigger pieces of firewood into kindling, where i used my Victorinox OH Fireman. It has a liner-lock, and i`ll make a word of warning here. Liner-locks are pretty safe when it comes to locking-mechanisms, but the one on my OH Fireman disengaged without problem when i batoned it. I didn`t cut myself, as i`m always careful about where i have my fingers, and since the blade was in a piece of wood, i doubt i could`ve cut myself, even if i tried.
The liner-lock on my Vic-Fireman still works just beautifully, but if i am to baton with it again, i know what to look out for.
And i do believe i`d rather use a fixed-blade knife, than a folder, even though a folder will do the job nicely.
(Just the other day, i made a new handle for some weird-looking pick-axe for a friend of mine, where the only tools i had, was a hammer and my Victorinox Ranger. I had to split a piece of fir to make wedges, so i could secure the handle. The Vic-Ranger did the job just fine.)

And thusly, i`ll make the following statement:
It`s not the size of your tool that`s important. It`s what you do with it that counts.
(A good knife can slice and dice, and it`ll even baton. But it`ll never ever become a pry-bar.)

Oh yeah, axes were invented for a reason. If you go into the woods, with the plan of making a fire, or even clearing an area, a machete or an axe should be with you. Even one of them small pocket-axes will be better than lugging around a 24" knife, made from 5" thick steel, just so you`re sure it won`t break when you proceed to bash it into a standing oak, in the belief that you can baton the tree down, after having seen on some video-tape that you can crush bricks and cars with the edge-side of the blade, without harming the cutting power...
As i said, knives are for cutting. If you want to crush something, buy a hammer. If you want to pry, buy a pry-bar.

(Didn`t your mother tell you to never pry into other peoples business??)
 
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