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- Apr 27, 2011
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SPLITTING ALONG THE SIDE BY BATONING
I picked this test because I find myself frequently coming into logs from the side rather than down the center, usually by hammering the pommel. Using big knives to split by chopping doesn't really work for me; it's not as efficient and it's also dangerous since I'm such a spaz. I baton with hatchets as well as knives for the same reason.
This test was done with 3" palo verde.
CSTH - 10 strikes and it was split. Aiming made it a tiny bit hard to set but the deep bite helped, and once it was set you can frickin' wail on this thing with a baton.
Warthog - 22 strikes. Doesn't really bite so it was hard to start, and the thinnish blade doesn't really spread the wood out. The semi-sharpened (and very long) swedge tore the baton up and doesn't offer a great surface for striking. Batoning on the pommel worked okay, the surface shape doesn't really invite it, and the kraton got tore up.
BK2 - 5 strikes. Easy to set, the spine offers the ultimate surface for batoning, and the width splits the wood well. This piece pretty much blew apart.
Bk10 - 25 strikes (this piece of wood was a little bigger). The start was fine... the thinner blade doesn't spread the wood as well as the Bk2, and between the swedge and the thumb ramp there's a lot less useful area for good striking contact with the baton.
I'd say that that this was probably a tie between the CSTH and the Bk2. Both work really well for this application and both allow you to absolutely beat the hell out of them with a baton. The CSTH might actually have to take this one for a simple reason: your steadying hand is well out of the way of the baton. With the knives your hand is right there in the action, and I did happen to smash the <bad word> out of a finger when a baton swing glanced off the knife pommel.
SPLITTING DOWN THE LOG BY BATONING
So this was the big one, Elizabeth. Thick, brutally hard wood with lots of knots and tricky grain stuff going on inside. A great hardcore test for these knives. The wood actually presented a problem because each piece was so different that it became impossible to make a good comparison. For instance, the piece I selected for the Bk2 was done in 12 strikes, but the piece I selected for the Bk10 I was never able to actually split with any of these tools, heh. So rather than count strokes, I'll just give general impressions of this kind of hard-use application.
Bk10 - It really didn't work for me, for most of the problems stated above. The thinner blade didn't seem to spread/split very well. The spine of the knife doesn't offer much useful real estate for the baton, due to the swedge and ramp. Striking the back was weird, which them communicated the shocks and knife movements straight to the hand. The sharpish swedge tears up the baton. The thinner blade did make it easier to remove the knife when it was really deep in the wood. I had the grivory scales on this knife and they are absolutely the right choice for wood bashing.
Warthog - Basically all the problems as the BK10, with one additional problem. The very wide blade would get 'steered' by the weird grain stuff going on inside the wood and end up twisting in all kinds of weird positions. Also that bigass blade was really, really hard to get unstuck. I would have thought the softer kraton handle would be good for shock protection, but the bad batoning strikes went straight to the holding hand. It feels really soft and nice for lighter-duty applications, but not for super smashing. Not to mention the material gets torn up a little easier than you'd really want.
Bk2 - Worked great. The flat spine offers batoning surfaces front and back, and that made life easier on the holding hand and also allowed me to use a lot more force on the baton. The blade shape is good for getting real deep. Good tip. The thickness makes it hard really frickin' to get out once it's stuck. This kind of heavy duty work was rough on the fancy cocobolo scales, though, and all of a sudden made the grivory look A LOT more attractive. Beating the heck out of scales that cost more than the knife hurts the soul a little, especially because I'm already having trouble with these scales (there are some issues with the way the holes were drilled).
CSTH - Generally this tool is great for heavy duty batoning too, but there are some problems once you get to thick and hard wood. First, the wide poll simply won't go into and spread a cut if the wood is uncooperative enough. I had a bad piece split open and I must have beat on the hawk 30 times but simply could not get the poll to advance into the split. Another problem is when you're batoning into a log along it's length and the head is inside the split, there's nothing sticking out for you to baton against. You either have to try to get your strikes to go into the split, or you have to be batoning from outside. Neither are great options. The long haft is great for steadying both the hawk and the wood you're splitting, keeps your hand out of harm's way, and greatly assists with unsticking the head.
Again, maybe a tie between the BK2 and CSTH, although perhaps the fact that the BK2 is pointed and can be driven into problem spots gives it an advantage, along with the hawk's issues when being batoned deep into a piece. Yeah, I'll go with that.
CUTTING TENT STAKES
A tip and a notch, nothing more than that. Not fine work and not really precision work, but still not dumb pounding like the stuff above. First, when it came to lopping this small, maybe half-inch limb, the Warthog and CSTH make the cleanest cuts and the BK2 and BK10 were much less reliable in cutting all the way through in one swing.
But when it came to a few whacks to sharpen the end and put in the notch, I'd say there was a three-way tie with the knives and the hawk came in behind all of them.
Winner, Warthog. Nice soft handle, great feeling swing, accurate and good performance in this lighter-duty application. Plus it looks so badass!
CONCLUSION AND MORE PHOTOS
So, I'm really glad I did this. I had this pile of sharp stuff I'd acquired over the last little while and I was really wondering what to use, when. Now I know. For backpacking or car camping where I'll be processing wood, it'll be the hawk or BK2 along with something smaller like a necker, nessie, or tweener. For backpacking with little wood processing expected or for day adventure trips (exploring old mines, ghost towns, indian ruins) then the Bk10 is a nice and light tool but still superstrong utility tool to bring along. A necker, nessie, or tweener will be the best option for simple hiking trips. For heavy wood processing wherever, I'll reach for the BK2 each time. The Warthog is going in the truck.
Like I suspected, the hawk (especially with the hammer poll) is a great tool for this kind of wood duty. Once I get the head to stay put and wrap the haft, it'll be what I use the most when I want the best performance in the lightest package. It'll allow me to focus all the wood work on the hawk and bring a knife that really isn't good for wood processing at all but has other strengths, like my nessmuk.
I like the BK10 because it's lively in the hand and light. The tests I did here are simply a little more heavy-duty and wood-focused than I think the knife can really be successful at. It's not like it didn't work, of course, but the BK2 and hawk were orders of magnitude better tools for the application. Can't see that as being a problem since the BK10 is a combat knife, and between the ramp and the swedge probably much better for using in a forward-stab motion than the BK2 could ever hope to be.
The Warthog will be a good truck knife. Nice and wide, so for weird prying and repair applications where you need to make sure it won't break, it'll be a champ. Since the handle isn't particularly tough, it's a good choice to care a little less about... oil stains and scrapes from hard use and dropping on the asphalt won't be a bother. It's a really great chopper, though, so I could see myself pulling it out of the truck to clear branches off my property in the North if I happened to leave my hawk at home. Only problem, and it's a big one, is that I'm going to have to fix the handle sometime soon. You may have seen on the forums that early runs of this new Warthog had loose handles and this one is no different, so I'll be drilling out the lanyard tube and then epoxying the whole package back together nice and tight.
The BK2 is a fricking beast. Indestructible, unstoppable, and utterly dependable. Much like a great white shark, the BK2 is designed for nothing but killing and eating (wood, that is). I'm surprised the earth didn't shake, how hard I was hitting that thing. It's really heavy. The biggest problem I personally have is like I mentioned above; marathonman's scales. I think I introduced a weakness into something that had no weaknesses, and I'm going to have to think long and hard about what to do with this issue. I'm not going to be able to take the scales on and off a whole lot more times before the holes are shot and I'll have to epoxy them, so perhaps the Bk10 is a better home for them and the BK2 gets grivory back. Forget micarta; as nice as it is, I bet that material is much easier damaged.
THE END
I picked this test because I find myself frequently coming into logs from the side rather than down the center, usually by hammering the pommel. Using big knives to split by chopping doesn't really work for me; it's not as efficient and it's also dangerous since I'm such a spaz. I baton with hatchets as well as knives for the same reason.
This test was done with 3" palo verde.
CSTH - 10 strikes and it was split. Aiming made it a tiny bit hard to set but the deep bite helped, and once it was set you can frickin' wail on this thing with a baton.
Warthog - 22 strikes. Doesn't really bite so it was hard to start, and the thinnish blade doesn't really spread the wood out. The semi-sharpened (and very long) swedge tore the baton up and doesn't offer a great surface for striking. Batoning on the pommel worked okay, the surface shape doesn't really invite it, and the kraton got tore up.
BK2 - 5 strikes. Easy to set, the spine offers the ultimate surface for batoning, and the width splits the wood well. This piece pretty much blew apart.
Bk10 - 25 strikes (this piece of wood was a little bigger). The start was fine... the thinner blade doesn't spread the wood as well as the Bk2, and between the swedge and the thumb ramp there's a lot less useful area for good striking contact with the baton.
I'd say that that this was probably a tie between the CSTH and the Bk2. Both work really well for this application and both allow you to absolutely beat the hell out of them with a baton. The CSTH might actually have to take this one for a simple reason: your steadying hand is well out of the way of the baton. With the knives your hand is right there in the action, and I did happen to smash the <bad word> out of a finger when a baton swing glanced off the knife pommel.
SPLITTING DOWN THE LOG BY BATONING
So this was the big one, Elizabeth. Thick, brutally hard wood with lots of knots and tricky grain stuff going on inside. A great hardcore test for these knives. The wood actually presented a problem because each piece was so different that it became impossible to make a good comparison. For instance, the piece I selected for the Bk2 was done in 12 strikes, but the piece I selected for the Bk10 I was never able to actually split with any of these tools, heh. So rather than count strokes, I'll just give general impressions of this kind of hard-use application.
Bk10 - It really didn't work for me, for most of the problems stated above. The thinner blade didn't seem to spread/split very well. The spine of the knife doesn't offer much useful real estate for the baton, due to the swedge and ramp. Striking the back was weird, which them communicated the shocks and knife movements straight to the hand. The sharpish swedge tears up the baton. The thinner blade did make it easier to remove the knife when it was really deep in the wood. I had the grivory scales on this knife and they are absolutely the right choice for wood bashing.
Warthog - Basically all the problems as the BK10, with one additional problem. The very wide blade would get 'steered' by the weird grain stuff going on inside the wood and end up twisting in all kinds of weird positions. Also that bigass blade was really, really hard to get unstuck. I would have thought the softer kraton handle would be good for shock protection, but the bad batoning strikes went straight to the holding hand. It feels really soft and nice for lighter-duty applications, but not for super smashing. Not to mention the material gets torn up a little easier than you'd really want.
Bk2 - Worked great. The flat spine offers batoning surfaces front and back, and that made life easier on the holding hand and also allowed me to use a lot more force on the baton. The blade shape is good for getting real deep. Good tip. The thickness makes it hard really frickin' to get out once it's stuck. This kind of heavy duty work was rough on the fancy cocobolo scales, though, and all of a sudden made the grivory look A LOT more attractive. Beating the heck out of scales that cost more than the knife hurts the soul a little, especially because I'm already having trouble with these scales (there are some issues with the way the holes were drilled).
CSTH - Generally this tool is great for heavy duty batoning too, but there are some problems once you get to thick and hard wood. First, the wide poll simply won't go into and spread a cut if the wood is uncooperative enough. I had a bad piece split open and I must have beat on the hawk 30 times but simply could not get the poll to advance into the split. Another problem is when you're batoning into a log along it's length and the head is inside the split, there's nothing sticking out for you to baton against. You either have to try to get your strikes to go into the split, or you have to be batoning from outside. Neither are great options. The long haft is great for steadying both the hawk and the wood you're splitting, keeps your hand out of harm's way, and greatly assists with unsticking the head.
Again, maybe a tie between the BK2 and CSTH, although perhaps the fact that the BK2 is pointed and can be driven into problem spots gives it an advantage, along with the hawk's issues when being batoned deep into a piece. Yeah, I'll go with that.
CUTTING TENT STAKES
A tip and a notch, nothing more than that. Not fine work and not really precision work, but still not dumb pounding like the stuff above. First, when it came to lopping this small, maybe half-inch limb, the Warthog and CSTH make the cleanest cuts and the BK2 and BK10 were much less reliable in cutting all the way through in one swing.
But when it came to a few whacks to sharpen the end and put in the notch, I'd say there was a three-way tie with the knives and the hawk came in behind all of them.
Winner, Warthog. Nice soft handle, great feeling swing, accurate and good performance in this lighter-duty application. Plus it looks so badass!
CONCLUSION AND MORE PHOTOS
So, I'm really glad I did this. I had this pile of sharp stuff I'd acquired over the last little while and I was really wondering what to use, when. Now I know. For backpacking or car camping where I'll be processing wood, it'll be the hawk or BK2 along with something smaller like a necker, nessie, or tweener. For backpacking with little wood processing expected or for day adventure trips (exploring old mines, ghost towns, indian ruins) then the Bk10 is a nice and light tool but still superstrong utility tool to bring along. A necker, nessie, or tweener will be the best option for simple hiking trips. For heavy wood processing wherever, I'll reach for the BK2 each time. The Warthog is going in the truck.
Like I suspected, the hawk (especially with the hammer poll) is a great tool for this kind of wood duty. Once I get the head to stay put and wrap the haft, it'll be what I use the most when I want the best performance in the lightest package. It'll allow me to focus all the wood work on the hawk and bring a knife that really isn't good for wood processing at all but has other strengths, like my nessmuk.
I like the BK10 because it's lively in the hand and light. The tests I did here are simply a little more heavy-duty and wood-focused than I think the knife can really be successful at. It's not like it didn't work, of course, but the BK2 and hawk were orders of magnitude better tools for the application. Can't see that as being a problem since the BK10 is a combat knife, and between the ramp and the swedge probably much better for using in a forward-stab motion than the BK2 could ever hope to be.
The Warthog will be a good truck knife. Nice and wide, so for weird prying and repair applications where you need to make sure it won't break, it'll be a champ. Since the handle isn't particularly tough, it's a good choice to care a little less about... oil stains and scrapes from hard use and dropping on the asphalt won't be a bother. It's a really great chopper, though, so I could see myself pulling it out of the truck to clear branches off my property in the North if I happened to leave my hawk at home. Only problem, and it's a big one, is that I'm going to have to fix the handle sometime soon. You may have seen on the forums that early runs of this new Warthog had loose handles and this one is no different, so I'll be drilling out the lanyard tube and then epoxying the whole package back together nice and tight.
The BK2 is a fricking beast. Indestructible, unstoppable, and utterly dependable. Much like a great white shark, the BK2 is designed for nothing but killing and eating (wood, that is). I'm surprised the earth didn't shake, how hard I was hitting that thing. It's really heavy. The biggest problem I personally have is like I mentioned above; marathonman's scales. I think I introduced a weakness into something that had no weaknesses, and I'm going to have to think long and hard about what to do with this issue. I'm not going to be able to take the scales on and off a whole lot more times before the holes are shot and I'll have to epoxy them, so perhaps the Bk10 is a better home for them and the BK2 gets grivory back. Forget micarta; as nice as it is, I bet that material is much easier damaged.
THE END
soon me hardies.
. I'll have to pick up another one soon, I think I need it. Those cocobolo scales sure are sexy. Thanks for all the pics:thumbup:
