Is this 'batoning' and firewood chopping with a knife a passing trend?

B

Blackie Scantling

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Dec 26, 2013
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Because growing up hunting and camping with expert outdoorsmen I've never known about 'batoning' until reading about it. It looks painfully odd to see someone with a fixed blade knife hacking on a dead tree and then assuming they fell it splitting it into smaller pieces and or cutting cord wood. I've been in some primitive camping situations that have turned into near survival campouts due to having to pack in everything on foot and where food rationing became an issue and none of us resorted to chopping and splitting firewood with our knives. Thats what and ax and hatchet were for. What firewood that couldn't be gathered and stomped into campfire size pieces may have been cut with an ax. The energy it takes to carry a 2lb. double bit ax and use it to supply all the wood you need is a lot less than the that used to hack and whittle to produce one piece of fire wood. If you're in a survival situation and you have to cut the hearts out of dead wood thats wet, again, the ax. To sit there and burn much needed calories and valuable energy not to mention getting blisters to chop lengths of firewood that will be burned as fast as you can hack through it or pound a important piece of equipment through a piece of wood hoping it won't break to me is bizarre.
 
If you like an axe use an axe. Axes work great but sometimes I find a large knife is better for a given situation. Who cares what someone else does?

BTW. I've chopped plenty of smaller branches with a large knife and used it to clear away branches to get at a log with a saw or axe, but I've never needed to baton through a log with a knife. At least not for firewood. Made a spatula once by batoning a plank out of a small log and whitteling it down.
 
Saw and knife. Saw is much more efficient than either at falling a tree, and a fixed blade is safer when you are exhausted or hypothermic, as you never once swing it.
 
A lot of people will not want to carry a few pounds of ax when a 10 oz knife will do the job and lets face it, people will follow an idea even if its not the best. I dont think its necessary in a "survival situation" and a lot of what you say is true.
 
I'm lazy. I process my firewood with a forestry harvester (ask the guy driving it to set aside some trees in a pile then run them through a firewood processor) or with a chainsaw + splitting axe. I rarely build fires out on the trail. Too high impact, too much work.

Back in the days when I did process a lot of wood out on the trail I used a fair size fiskars hatchet and a full size bow saw. Batonning works too, to each his own.
 
I am not a fan of batoning . I beleve in the right tool for the job . And i have seen poeple on youtube going mad on half a tree with there knives and then going mad when they brake . I can how ever see a uses for it for small bits of kinderling . But uther wise i don't see the point . But as you say what you do with your knife is up to you
 
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Some folks just like big blades. I don't think there is any going back from that. The axe has been around since man started making tools. It will always be effective, even though it may not be the most fashionable.
 
And what do you suppopse you'll do if you were on a day hike (you carry an ax on those too,do ya? ;) ) that turns into a survival situation and all you have is your BK2 with you? Freeze?

Lots of good points there,but besides the "if you don't wanna then don't" and "what's it to anyone else what someone else does" things,just as a good knife isn't the be-all-end-all answer,neither is the ax (especially if you don't have one with you). Just my 2 cents,no more or less important than anyone else's :)
 
They were not much of experts if they have not heard of batoning. It is a traditional woodworking skill.
 
I think it's more of a wilderness fashion thing. It might work, but the reason people do it is because it's neat. The fact is, if you're in the woods the easiest way to get wood is to break dead branches off of the bottoms of trees and off of deadfalls. You don't need a cutting tool at all.

I spent the night 6000 feet up on snow covered ice last week, and the only reason I used a knife was to cut up my biscuits to go with dinner. I kept a fire going for 3 hours heating stew and water using only dead pine branches broken off from the base of the tree trunks around camp. This was after our gas stove failed, and I had gotten my pants wet in numerous falls on said ice. Even in a semi-emergency situation, batoning was not needed at all.
 
After the past 4 or 5 years that I've really being doing the outdoors thing proper, I've found batoning to be safer and more effective than an axea least 8 out of 10 times. Axe is heavier, more dangerous, more difficult to use, and usually requires a good chopping block if you don't want to damage it.
 
Mostly it is a technique for people that get caught away from camp for a night or so. Most of them won't be packing an ax, saw or hatchet with them. This includes campers, hunters, downed pilots, etc.. Most practice the technique because they like beating on things (IMO). People who go into the woods for extended periods of time; trail crews, surveyors, geologists, etc. will usually have better equipment with them. The practice of batoning is a hotly debated subject and think it is a viable technique if a person is caught with limited tools.
 
It has some very valid uses, but is way overstressed. If you are reviewing a knife, you have to do something with it. Many choose to baton.
I doubt I will ever try to chop a tree with a knife.
 
An axe is usually better for chopping and serious splitting. Knives have a place in fire making though. Without a proper chopping stump its mighty hard to split nice thin kindling. A big knife makes splitting kindling child's play and is more safe I believe. Feather sticking is possible with an axe but a good fixed blade is usually much easier to use.
One issue I have with axes though is if you swing into a piece of wood and it doesn't split you have this awkward situation where you can't baton, and it's hard to pull it out and sometimes dangerous. I've always wanted to make an uber-beefy version of a Japanese style hatchet for home wood processing making big stacks of kindling. make it with about 3/8" thick with a 10 inch blade and a 6 or seven inch handle. Would be hefty enough to split kindling but if a knot proved tricky, you could baton or remove it easily.
 
When I was a kid, they taught us how to use hatchets for chopping and splitting wood. Worked for me. I find a hatchet is lighter than a lot of larger knives. Some people say the large knives are useful for a lot of different things and fun to use. I think batoning with a knife that is designed for it is reasonable, but my first choice is a hatchet. A knife like a Busse NMSFNO won't have any trouble chopping or batoning.

 
It's a desired skill in the Bushcraft world when you are limited to working with what you have on your person. Let's face it, axes are heavy and cumbersome. Though trying to baton a 8" tree with a 9" knife leaves a lot to be desired. In my opinion if you stay with in the limits of the blade length, batoning isn't that tough do and knowing how to do it only expands your skill set. In other words, what happens when the chainsaw runs out of gas or your handsaw blade kinks or snaps in half? I've been in the woods downing firewood for the Winter and over tightened the fuel cap on my chainsaw causing it to crack and leaving it incapable of holding fuel. Puts a damper on the day pretty fast to say the least. I'm not saying you want to clear an oak grove with a knife but in a pinch it helps to have a backup plan. Backpackers can especially use the knowledge to help keep their pack weight down while trekking in to their camping location. Batoning wood isn't a passing trend but not exactly something I want to do unless necessary.
 
olybears57 said:
Saw and knife. Saw is much more efficient than either at falling a tree, and a fixed blade is safer when you are exhausted or hypothermic, as you never once swing it.
Click to expand...

Best answer. Covers all bases. I'd like to add the between an axe or a knife, I prefer the one that's made mostly of steel as opposed to the one I have to rehandle if the wooden bits break against other wooden bits in an overstrike. I've carried hawks instead because the handle is easier to replace, but I was raised with machetes, in a machete friendly environment, so to use an axe just doesn't feel as natural to me (beyond splitting).
 
I dont know any expert outdoorsmans here .

I have watched some on TV , I guess they are smarter than me because some of the stuff they demonstrate is just downright dumb even dangerous , to my uneducated mind anyway .

Usually , Ill use a smaller knife to split off some kindling from a wrist sized branch , it does take tap or two at times , and a good twist to break the wood out , but I think I use a knife thats up to the task , it has been for a few years anyway .

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OK , so maybe a small knife splitting off some kindling isnt what you were talking about ?
Maybe its bigger , chopper style knives ?

Well , yeah I got one of them too . I havent ever felt like I was working any harder using it that I would using an axe .
Its seems to pack more of a punch than my hatchet ...

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and its actually very comparable to the axe even .

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Difference is , with my knife , I can use it for machete duty , its why I made it actually , I stand a shade under 6'5" and weigh in at around 220 pound , and trying to find a knife to cut cane and grass that I didnt have to kneel to use wasnt easy where I was living , so I made one to fit my height .

Turns out , it does pretty good at axe duty too, It is a dream to baton with , make shingles if you want them .
any way , yeah , I use my knives to split wood . I watched an expert outdoors guy on TV and ya know ... I think Ill take a lot of his advice with a grain of salt .

YMMV , and youre welcome to do as you wish with your gear :) I spent a few years learning what works for me , when I see something easier and better , Ill do that instead . But as for doing things right according to an expert ? , there are considerations here .. is s/he/ an expert in my part of the world ? I learned my stuff from regular tribesmen and women , my own people , the Barkentji people , as well as the Yamatji , Noongyar and Pitjinjarra people , they are not accredited experts ,and what I went away with after living with them , I never passed any exams , I was able to hold my own , that was good enough .

Who is it handing out these expert titles anyway ? Id like one to show off with a while .
 
I don't even use a large knife to chop wood... Like olybear I prefer a saw, and plus I think it's easier to split off kindling with a fixed blade. I bum around in the woods a lot these days and like to have a quick fire to sit by, I haven't felt the need to buy an axe yet.

In fact I can't even remember the last time I even saw an axe in the woods...I know a lot of people who camp for extended periods and have nothing but saws.
 
I find small knife (5" and less) batoning very interesting. It can be very useful for notching and cutting small poles when your hands become tired. Also handy for different sizes of kindling and splitting excess off of a bush carving in the early stages. I may use it to notch dead stuff thicker than I can break, rarely. That's all for me.

You might never see a knife used this way in the kitchen, where knives are most commonly used, and so batoning seems uncommon and different. It is good that a beginner can pick this technique up quickly and stay relatively safe but.... What I see to be true about beginners, and younger people especially, is once they see this technique is valid (for certain things) it is fun to test the limits of beating on the equipment. MOF, it is fun to hammer on stuff and so you see users take the beatings too far on YouT and the forums. Reaching the point of equipment failure or taking on non-productive projects for the sake of using the knife in this way. Probably why you rarely see anyone using wedges to aid in splitting.

It is also interesting that it does not seem to matter what the baton has going on ergonomically, as long as the weight is there to force the blade through the task. Ergos are undoubtedly important for the knife, but not for the baton. :confused:
 
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