Everything I learned about batoning on Bladeforums

dogstar said:
1. Batoning is stupid knife abuse
2. Axes are too dangerous
3. Youtube is a bad influence
4. Bushcraft is just a marketing ploy
5. Just light some twigs
6. Just light your snacks
7. Mors Kochanski > Ray Mears
8. My wood is gnarlier than your wood
9. Thick blades are for thick people
10. Humans have been batoning since the dawn of time, but not since your grandpa was born
11. You don't need to split firewood
12. Every day is like survival
13. Just have a knife, parang, hatchet, saw, lighter, vaseline with you at all times
14. There is nothing a gallon of gasoline can't solve
15. Smatchet is always the answer
16. We all secretly want to be operators
17. Get a froe
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#8 my wood is fine grained, flexible, so smooth it can be pounded and won't give you splinters, as is of impressive enough length and girth for most endeavours.

#14 yes because you can't carry a gallon of electricity. Also, if you build a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day. If you set a man on fire he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

#15 this or junglas.
 
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K.O.D. said:
#14 yes because you can't carry a gallon of electricity. Also, if you build a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day. If you set a man on fire he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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Rule 14 trumps everything. That second aphorism, while true enough, got me three days in Facebook jail.
 
I like splitting wood so I can manage the size of the fire, and how much fuel I’m using. I do a lot of desert camping and there isn’t always a bounty of fuel. I also love knives and find it as a great excuse to use them in a harder use situation to know there limitations and reliability

Is it necessary? Definitely not. Do I love doing it? You bet your ass
 
I'm still wondering where those "cut to proper length" sticks of wood came from.

I think a better use of your knife would be to whittle out 2 or more wooden wedges, use the saw you used to make those neat, perfect-length sticks, then use a rock or similar to pound the wedges.
 
Speaking of gnarley wood. I will have to do a video of some of the horror shows I get as bought firewood here.

Which I can baton a skrama through.
 
Me and my brother and our buds were batoning shit before there was even a term for it. We just called it “hey, split that log down to smaller pieces with that knife. Yeah, just beat it through with that log”.🤷‍♂️



Triton Triton - yeah, they bend sometimes getting pounded through. They don’t stay bent.
 
While I get your point, and obviously neither your brother or you knew the word for it.

The correct word is Rive, and it’s probably several thousand years old it is derived from an old Norse word.
 
ShaiHulud said:
Did Granny Gatewood put "batoning" in her sack of stuff in order to traverse the Appalachian Trail? 😉
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She grew up in log cabins, lived (more like survived, if you read her story) most of her adult life on a farm in the first third of the 1900’s and built fires on the trail, so I’d have to say “yes”, she knew all about it.
 
I have been camping my entire life but I batoned(is that a word?) wood for the first time last summer on a motorcycle trip around the U.P. of Michigan. All the wood was wet including the firewood sold at the campground so I thought I would try some batoning with my White River FC7. Worked great! I beat the heck out of that knife and after a cleaning it still looked new. Generally, in the forest of the Eastern U.S. where I do most of my camping, there is a lot of kindling sized wood laying around so batoning is unnecessary.

U.P. Campsite (1 of 1).JPG
 
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Sibyrnes said:
I have been camping my entire life but I batoned(is that a word?) wood for the first time last summer on a motorcycle trip around the U.P. of Michigan. All the wood was wet including the firewood sold at the campground so I thought I would try some batoning with my White Mountain FC7. Worked great! I beat the heck out of that knife and after a cleaning it still looked new. Generally, in the forest of the Eastern U.S. where I do most of my camping, there is a lot of kindling sized wood laying around so batoning is unnecessary.

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Nice ride.
 
Batoning / battening / riving ...was actually something I learned about here on BF ! :cool:

So I tried it and it works fine . But you do need to use something for the baton . Carry or make one as needed .

Which makes the technique less useful for trail maintenance or other mobile tasks , IMO .

While it's handy for a bushcraft , survival , field knife to be capable of "riving" ; IMO , not every gentleman's folder needs to be tested for this type use .
 
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