How many of you have stopped batoning?

[Blues]

"Heresy!"

 

[ferider]

Nothing wrong with batons

 

[Danke42]

For a nice campfire all you need is a chainsaw and a tiger torch. And some trees of course.

 

[EngrSorenson]

For a nice campfire all you need is a chainsaw and a tiger torch. And some trees of course.

I find a stacked and seasoned cord of wood is a simple thing you can bring with you into the woods that really cuts down on the camp chores.

 

[Hawk45]

Never done in a real use situation. Gathering has always been the choice to get a fire going, mostly broken over a knee or by foot. Next option would be using the Silky saw on downed/dead trees once the ground is picked clean. Wet wood can be dried next to the fire. A hatchet/axe can be used to baton with the same way a knife can if you want to be more precise and protect your fingers. If all else failed to get dry wood I would baton with a knife, but not as a primary way to process wood.

 

[sgt1372]

Never batoned anything while backpacking/camping because most places I went prohibited open fires and I wanted (per the philosophy that I always try to follow when out in the woods) to "leave no trace."

Instead, I always carried a portable stove going back to a white gas Optimus in the 60's that I still own, that still works and that looks a lot better than this one:

. . . to a JetBoil now that I use now.

The worst that I would ever do was make a small fire out of straw/twigs and small branches that I found lying around; nothing that would require batoning anything and all that would be necessary to create a fire w/a mg rod.

So, batoning has always been pretty irelevant to what I "needed" to do w/a knife.

 

[AntDog]

I find a stacked and seasoned cord of wood is a simple thing you can bring with you into the woods that really cuts down on the camp chores.

But then you’d need to baton it down. Lol

I “baton” wood all the time. I did it before I ever even heard the term. Back then I said I needed to “split some wood” and did it.

Could’ve been a damn in vogue youtube gajillionaire!

 

[Danke42]

I find a stacked and seasoned cord of wood is a simple thing you can bring with you into the woods that really cuts down on the camp chores.

I must confess that at times I do employ a firewood caddy for longer excursions.

 

[Natlek]

There is no safer way, in my father's house ....... last winter

 

[91bravo]

I gotta finish that series of pics batoning to make fire. I see Pàdruig avatar in one of the pictures

 

[Knives&Lint]

The only time I really baton is when I'm breaking down small pieces of the store bought lighter knot (AKA fatwood) into even smaller pieces. You don't need a very big piece of this stuff to get a fire started, and breaking them down from the way they come in the box into 2-3 pieces each makes the box last 2-3 times as long. The thing is, I never consciously thought I'm going to baton now, I just did it.

 

[EngrSorenson]

Could’ve been a damn in vogue youtube gajillionaire!

You batoned before batoning was cool.
You should start making videos of other things you do as a matter of course, just in case one of those things is the next “thing”. (Remember me when your famous, please.)

It’ll be a bunch of young ladies with Onlyfans accounts and Antdog running things in a decade. I’m okay with it.

I must confess that at times I do employ a firewood caddy for longer excursions.

It’s good for them, plenty of exercise and the bums earn a wage. It’s almost philanthropic, really.

 

[hotempered]

Pack a kindling cracker and mallet. Or use a stone instead of a mallet. LOL

 

[Bob Denman]

How many of us never started batoning?

Put me on the list...
... but I might have the perfect knife on the way, for that job.

 

[unwisefool]

I gotta finish that series of pics batoning to make fire. I see Pàdruig avatar in one of the pictures

There are a LOT of dead leaves very close to that fire...

 

[91bravo]

There are a LOT of dead leaves very close to that fire...

Yes, there are.

 

[Insipid Moniker]

I gotta finish that series of pics batoning to make fire. I see Pàdruig avatar in one of the pictures

Great pics, Jonny!

On topic, when I actually camped a lot I never did any batoning, but that's at least partly because I had never heard of or seen anyone doing it before. Where I live and camp there's not much need to baton wood, as dry kindling and tinder are usually very easy to find, but it's definitely come in handy a time or two now that I know what it is and how to do it. It may be a bit ironic, but the times batoning has really come in handy for me were both when I was at a cabin and hadn't thought to bring many woods tools beyond a good knife and someone bought a bundle of firewood. Both times there wasn't much in the way of kindling, so batoning was definitely the way to go and let us make our s'mores and relax quite happily both times.

 

[Triton]

I used to think batoning was silly, after all it’s hard to find perfectly cut logs to baton when you are scrabbling around out in the bush like all us real bushcrafters do. When not in the back country, I have to fight the urge to use to use tools actually designed to split wood like axes and mauls and froes and such but I know that at the end of the day us manly types should use our very expensive overbuilt knives for this sort of task.

This was brought home to me just the other day when I actually had to use my knife to baton a bear. I was wandering about out on the woods as us he man types are apt to do when I heard some snuffling in the undergrowth. I cautiously crept up on the sounds and to my surprise found a grizzly bear eating the remains of a bald Eagle. I couldn’t let such an insult to our national symbol go unpunished so I whipped out my trusty ridiculously overbuilt knife to attack the brute. I started with an ice pick grip and stabbed away but the bear was pretty tough. He might have got me in the end, but I picked up a convenient bit of wood which would probably be the perfect size to put on a fire, but that all us batonners use to wack our knives into much larger pieces of wood. My batonning muscle memory kicked in and I battonned that bear clean in two. Big foot gave me a high five as I left the woods and now I have two half bear rugs.

Don’t let anyone fool you batonning is a useful skill and you can beat a bear with a knife.

 

[not2sharp]

Why baton when a regular big old 4lb camp knife will do?

n2s

 

[000Robert]

I was taught to use a hatchet.