Everything I learned about batoning on Bladeforums

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 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.

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Da UP is a fantastic place to camp and enjoy outdoor activities. Totally agree on your firewood availability assessment. I enjoy battoning wood with a knife but it is usually unecessary to start fires.
 
I have never batoned with a knife, really don't understand it, but hey, i'm pretty chill and I support other folks kinks. 😏

For me and the wife, we're past the backpacking age, we camp in an old suburban with a cushy futon mattress thrown in the back. So I can carry more gear, lot of times if it's just a weekend we pack in our own rounds, and a simple hatchet splits 'em fine.

But one thing that's worked pretty good over the years for cutting branches in an area where you've got a lot of stuff that's 3-5" thick, is my DeWalt sawzall and an aggressive long blade made for doing this, thing is a little demon on wood, and doesn't take up much space.

For anything bigger, I got a little Husqy.
 
I don't camp much these days, but I have done a lot of motorcycle touring and camping over the last 55 years. I never heard of batoning until I came here. Because we had the “desert candle”, it didn’t matter much whether we had kindling or dry wood.
Cut the top off a beer can (one of those was always available), add 2-3 fingers of gasoline (also ready at hand), build your fire around it and light. It would burn steadily for long enough to dry your wood and light it. I suppose there was a limit to the size of logs you could ignite, but it always worked.
 
Henry Beige said:
Because we had the “desert candle”, it didn’t matter much whether we had kindling or dry wood.
Cut the top off a beer can (one of those was always available), add 2-3 fingers of gasoline
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Haha - #14!
👍👍
 
scdub said:
Haha - #14!
👍👍
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Look up "soda can stove" on Youtube. Since my hands are shaky now I bought one off a fellow who makes them for about ten bucks. Very little visible flame, and NO smoke, it's surprising the amount of heat they put out. They recommended methyl alcohol, I carry ethanol instead because it can serve dual purpose as a form of anesthetic if you have to put a "Boy Scout" traction splint on a badly broken leg (that would majorly suck, but not doing it is worse in the end). Shit happens, especially in rough country like the Appalachians. There are some places in the Smokies near here that will scare the crap out of an otherwise logical person unless they grew up there. If you're a "reader", check out some of Horace Kephart's books. It's a whole 'nother place, and a whole 'nother culture.
 
Gentlemen,

If we look at this logically, the answer is abundantly clear...

Batoning was invented by Big Knife to put the stone tool industry out of business.

Obviously stone tools, due to their superior corrosion resistance, were a threat.

What Big Knife doesn't want you to know, is that steel knives are a leading cause of male pattern baldness, and that they contribute to global warming.

This charade is being perpetuated so the executives from Big Knife can continue to fund their lavish lifestyles, and wear slippers made from the skins of innocent baby fur seals.
 
A light hatchet or my preference, a tomahawk, along with good fixed blade with the skill to make wooden wedges will do the trick if you understand their use and value.

For those who don't value a tomahawk, you may not understand how they work - they're like a driver in golf, they get their most efficient energy from "club-head speed", not from brute force. Learn to swing one fast and accuracy (takes some practice), and you'll be amazed at how capable of a tool it is - and it weighs far less than an axe. It's also a bit like a knife, too, it's worth little (outside of bashing in skulls) if it isn't viciously sharp.
 
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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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I'll confess that I like to reminisce and tell true stories, forgive me if that isn't welcome here.

Actually, #17 with something like a "baton" (which is French for "stick" IIRC) is probably the best answer if you keep the froe fairly sharp so it will "bite" easily - otherwise you can use a small axe/hatchet to make a groove in the wood so you can get the froe started. I had a best friend (RIP, Kermit) who heated almost exclusively with wood and I've helped start a fire in his furnace many times - there was always a stump, a reasonably sharp froe and a mallet near the furnace. Yes, furnace, not stove. The county was "de-commissioning" a small neighborhood schoolhouse that had central coal/plumbed radiators tkype heat in order to build a new bigger one in its place, and he bought its furnace and a lot of radiators/plumbing from them for scrap prices and plumbed his whole house for radiators. He kept a bit of coal for bitter weather or to bank the fire while he was at work, but the rest came from dead trees on coal company property with their blessing, as it kept them from dealing with dead trees falling and blocking important haulage roada. It helped that we always filled our boss's woodpile first, so anytime we finished a survey before quitting time we got to cut wood for the survey party members as well. Win/win. Almost all of it was done with a leetle Homelight Super 2, still my favorite saw for around the house if they're even still made. I lived in a "mobile home" in a very wide place near the road as finding a home to buy was impossible. There were a few lots just wide enough for trailers were sale, but they were $20k each in 1970's money, on a steep hill, and it took two of them and extensive dozer work to make one tiny home seat. That said, I bought a nice trailer and we were very happy with it. They're super easy to work on if you have frozen pipes, septic tank/sewage problems etc. Yep, we were hillbillies living in a trailer - except not in a trailer park (which is a nightmare), and we didn't live in tornado country.

Later we told the boss that we were encountering much bigger trees (which was true, we'd already harvested the easy ones), and needed a bigger saw. Since that endangered his free fuel supply (I don't know why, as the coal company offered its employees high BTU coal in convenient sizes at cost - if they remembered to bill you at all) he jumped on board with the big saw - maybe a Homelight 360, or maybe I confusing brands and models? Anyway it was a much bigger saw and the first time I used it on a tree that was leaning in a way that I had to cut it from the "up the hill" side, a tooth hung up and it put me on my butt. It was a great saw once you knew what to expect, and knew to let it go when it did that which was hard as that big saw took a death grip to keep it in line. A crew member later suggested that I fill my pockets full of rocks, as although I was ~6' tall I weighed 138#. I had the muscle as I'd had nothing but brutally hard mining jobs before getting to join the surveyors, I just didn't have the ass-sets for that saw in awkward positions.

Since I've already gone this far, I may as well tell you the very positive kicker. When I joined the crew they allowed firearms in the vehicle, but only long guns. At that time Everett was party chief, not Kermit, and Everett hated handguns and prohibited them. I eventually convinced him to let me bring mine, in a holster in the Jeep, and not use it with permission. We flushed some grouse so I got out and asked for my .22, fired twice at a grouse, put it back into the holster and handed it to Everett. Another rodman didn't believe I'd hit it, and went over the hill to get it himself (and make sure I didn't just wound it and would stomp it to death before bringing it back). His first words when he got to the Jeep were "Damn, he shot it's (friggin') head off with the first shot. Thereafter, gradually and after some pretty nasty encounters with poisonous snakes where we were working, we all were armed and obvious about it. Strangely, the copper thieves who had been pulling up our benchmark stakes (which were copper plated with brass heads for stamping BM numbers) started leaving our stakes alone. We never overtly threatened any of them except to, when seeing them eyeballing a stake we were driving, advising "I wouldn't pull that up if I were you".

If you got this far, thanks for tolerating an old man's memories. None of that was a lie, and not meant to be self-aggrandizing. As Elmer Keith titled his book, "Hell, I was there!"
 
Thorgrim said:
Shit happens, especially in rough country like the Appalachians. There are some places in the Smokies near here that will scare the crap out of an otherwise logical person unless they grew up there.
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What is this part of the comment referring to, exactly? Just the way you put it piqued my interest.
 
Hashishiin said:
What is this part of the comment referring to, exactly? Just the way you put it piqued my interest.
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Just a comment about some of the places I've lived, and the need to be armed with ... something. The local criminals that might otherwise take advantage of you are put off if you are armed, and if you can't legally carry a firearm then a machete, tomahawk, or good knife might make them give you a wide berth. Most don't intend to harm you unless they see you have something of value and can take it by force - and it can be surprising just what they value.
 
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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For a time I visited bushcraftUK. I first pissed them off when I told them not to baton a stick tang knife, especially if it's your only fixed blade knife. Yes, I know it can be done if you're careful, but afterward much oft your edge is toast.

What got me all but banned was the comment in reply to someone looking for wildlife where I said "make or buy a pair of true Woodland Native American moccasins,get off the damned trail and slow the hell down. That was met with outrage because I was "destroying the microbiology of the forest". That's just stupid and I told them so - I also added a challenge: give me a 30 minute head start and see if you can track me. If you can, I'll give you $100. Even though there were many members in the US, none took the challenge.

I especially liked #17. Given the huge load of shit many of them carry (the "1 is none and 2 is 1" theory), a short-handled froe makes good sense.

A good full-tang knife can stand batonning if you know how to do it without overly stressing the knife, but why use a knife for a job that a half-decent tomahawk or light axe is designed to do? I'm preaching to the choir here.

That was back in my "Evil Thorgrim" days online, and I'll admit that I had a lot of fun tearing down the "gospel of bush crafting". At the time I was in a Revolutionary War group that did a lot of what they called "trekking" (although that's a South African word) where we would go 5-10 miles through the roughest parts of the Appalachians with whatever things we could carry in a rolled up blanket carried on a tumpline (I don't recommend it), and I was happy when I found a primary historic source on primitive backpacks). And, of course, we were carrying flintlocks and all the accoutrements except ball/bullets, with the blessing of the local forest ranger. That's where I learned that if you're going to build a warming fire, build it long. Instead of sawing and batoning, we simply dragged the larger dry trees "as is" from each end of the fire and built a long fire between two limbs. We (at least two of us) bedded down in nothing but a Whitney or Hudson Bay blanket and all the clothes you have (it was cold that weekend, freezing rain and sleet). The cold would wake us up when the fire waned, and whoever got up would just drag the 4-6" trees from both directions toward the fire. Wool blankets won't catch fire but they will burn with constant exposure to a fire, so there was no danger from sparks and wood "popping". The two sour points of the weekend was that my "fire buddy" was a lazy-ass, and one time he just tossed a good-sized piece of wood "at" the fire . It dislodged a small burning log onto my blanket that landed on my blanket and burned il. A new friend who eschewed the fire, preferring to get under canvas, was so far from the fire that he woke up with the flared part of his brand-new custom brass-barreled blunderbuss frozen to his nose. It took off a sizeable piece of skin when he decided to just rip it off his nose, instead of letting us heat some water to release it. I was glad that I had, carefully hidden a modern first aid kit in an 18thC-looking wool bag, because we needed it as his nose glushed blood. I've never seen a skin wound bleed that much, it was hard to get bandages to stick.
 
People wanting to split firewood with a knife, hmph... next thing you know they are going to want to shave with an axe...

Hey, wait a minute :rolleyes:
 
alternative to using a knife to split a log, cut a shallow v on the end of the log (with the grain), carve a wooden wedge. drive said wedge into shallow v. voila, log is split, no need to abuse a knife that is more valuable doing knife things.
 
DocJD said:
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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You use a piece of firewood for the baton.:rolleyes:
 
goldie said:
You forgot to mention the brilliance of Joe X ; Beat the knife into oblivion with concrete ,steel, then shoot whatever scrap is left over.And if thats not bad enough, there was 1 commenter who bases his purchases on numnuts' videos.Theres a brain surgeon for the ages....
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A very valued member of the knife community.
 
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
Click to expand...
13 and 14 ftw
 
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