Knife vs Hatchet vs Saw

SouthernCross said:
Unless you are breaking up firewood thicker than your forearm, or don't have access to a forked tree, why would anyone bother using any of the tools listed (unless it's for the fun factor or feeling the need to justify a purchase :D ).
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Nice post Mick and I have broken up firewood many a time between two trees and used a star fire when a limb is too big. :)

To answer your question, in the temperate forest, an axe excels in productivity for large quantities of firewood, much of which will be bigger than your forearm and may need to be split. In addition, an axe makes shelter building much easier, from felling to limbing. Finally, an axe will be your best friend in wet weather, as you will want to fell a dead tree and be able to get to the dry wood inside. Yes you could get by without it, but it would be sorely missed, especially if it is wet and cold. Obviously geography and time a year plays an important part in what tools to carry.
 
OwenM said:
No surprises? Do you people do much chopping?
For the wood you would be cutting for shelter, or anything but a large fire, I'll take the 9" knife, hatchet, or axe every time.
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I kind of have to wonder the same thing.

I keep hearing how much faster saws are. A lot of the woods guys use I can get through with 1-3 strikes with an axe or kukri. Much faster.

Safer. . .than a hatchet? Maybe. Than an axe? Not if you use it right. You should use an axe such that it will bury itself in the ground, or swing wide of any of your limbs. This may often mean kneeling down. Even with a longer (18+") hatchet, swinging further from your body gives both better geometry and better safety.

The knife or kukri or machete, IMO is at least as safe as the saw when used right. This is because the "sweet spot" for chopping with all of them is a ways back from the tip, so a short strike will still bury the tip int eh wood. A long strike will simply yield a less effective strike to the wood, not a miss, or a shin-bury. The only unsafe condition for them is if you are holding the wood near where you are chopping.

Top this with the fact that few people bring a larger carpentry type saw with them and usually use a short pruning saw with only a few inches of stroke, and your efficiency goes out the window.

To each his own, but I don't see the advantage of a saw, unless it's a chainsaw. ;)
 
For any meaningful comparison you need context. If you're just screwing around in your back yard it really doesn't matter, bust out the chainsaw. If you're in the wilderness, and I don't mean car camping, then weight becomes a huge factor. A fiskars sliding saw weighs ~3oz, a NMFBM weighs ~32oz.

Carrying a big chopper or axe to build shelter? Why not just carry your shelter? My tarp, ridge/guy lines and ground sheet only weigh 18oz, can be set up in minutes instead of hours and will actually keep you dry. Seems like most these scenarios are just fantasy, I'd be willing to wager the only thing most of us need to use these tools for is making a fire, and if you're lugging a 2lb knife or hatchet for 20 miles a day on the trail, well, I just feel sorry for your feet, cause you can certainly get the job done with a lot less effort.
 
Ankar Sheng said:
Carrying a big chopper or axe to build shelter? Why not just carry your shelter?
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I've asked myself that question plenty of times. I'll carry a 7" knife on occasion, if I know I want to build a fire, and am likely to need to split some wood. I'm just as likely to have only a Victorinox Hiker on me.

Been thinking about the whole "vs." thing.
Different density materials, fiber and moisture content, different sawtooth patterns, geometries for blades and heads, handles...there's a lot more to cutting/chopping performance than "it's an axe, knife, saw, etc." and you can get some seriously bad performance out of some really nice tools if you pair them up with the wrong job.
Even what you're accustomed to, and the body mechanics that come into play. I'm sure there are people who have physical limitations, or just a lack of experience and want to keep things safe and simple, too.

Probably a lot of bias based on familiarity, also. For instance, I'm probably never going to like a saw. Hate using the things, and only will if it's far and away better for what I need done, which is very rare. Nothing like that for me in the outdoors, and in civilization, well, there's a reason they make circular saws, orbital Super Sawzalls and chainsaws.
Maybe there's an easy way to use something that goes back and forth, but the whole thing is an unnatural movement for me, and if there's a knack to using one, I simply don't have it. I've spent 60 hour weeks with a framing hammer rarely leaving my hand, though, and worked 8 years on a job where a sledgehammer saw daily use, and occasionally for hours on end. I know how to work the tool instead of the tool working me, in those instances. When you're used to that, a 1lb. knife is a whole lot of nothing to swing around, and anything short of a splitting maul might as well be a wiffle ball bat.
Put me on a saw, though...if it's not optimal for the material being cut, I'll want to take it to my wrists in a pretty short time.
 
Ankar Sheng said:
For any meaningful comparison you need context. If you're just screwing around in your back yard it really doesn't matter, bust out the chainsaw. If you're in the wilderness, and I don't mean car camping, then weight becomes a huge factor. A fiskars sliding saw weighs ~3oz, a NMFBM weighs ~32oz.

Carrying a big chopper or axe to build shelter? Why not just carry your shelter? My tarp, ridge/guy lines and ground sheet only weigh 18oz, can be set up in minutes instead of hours and will actually keep you dry. Seems like most these scenarios are just fantasy, I'd be willing to wager the only thing most of us need to use these tools for is making a fire, and if you're lugging a 2lb knife or hatchet for 20 miles a day on the trail, well, I just feel sorry for your feet, cause you can certainly get the job done with a lot less effort.
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I agree about context, so how much do you want to wager? ;)

I am starting on a group shelter for my friends and family this weekend like in the link below. Plan to spend a decent amount of time in it this fall/winter. If you are hiker, then in that context, you won't want to carry an axe. If you are only going in two miles from the nearest road and plan to stay there over and over for two or three seasons like I am, makes sense in that context to build a shelter and stock firewood, especially if we have another winter like we just did (relatively speaking).

Group Shelter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTBJJsgUsG8

I think it is worth noting too that all modern methods (shelter, fire, etc.) have their foundation in primitive methods. There is nothing wrong with practicing primitive skills.
 
Ankar Sheng said:
For any meaningful comparison you need context. If you're just screwing around in your back yard it really doesn't matter, bust out the chainsaw. If you're in the wilderness, and I don't mean car camping, then weight becomes a huge factor. A fiskars sliding saw weighs ~3oz, a NMFBM weighs ~32oz.

Carrying a big chopper or axe to build shelter? Why not just carry your shelter? My tarp, ridge/guy lines and ground sheet only weigh 18oz, can be set up in minutes instead of hours and will actually keep you dry. Seems like most these scenarios are just fantasy, I'd be willing to wager the only thing most of us need to use these tools for is making a fire, and if you're lugging a 2lb knife or hatchet for 20 miles a day on the trail, well, I just feel sorry for your feet, cause you can certainly get the job done with a lot less effort.
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one of my 24 inch Mk V tomahawks weighs 24 ounces, not two pounds, so your expectaitons or what good tools must weigh are a liittle low, to be kind, brother.

moreover,

why would i travel 20 miles a day on foot except in a situation like a disaster, where i would need my main tools anyways? you miss a lot travelling that fast, when you could've just sat down after a couple miles, perfectly relaxed. - with feet as fresh as a daisy.

i'm only interested in kit that lets me live in the wilderness, not just do an extended breath-hold visit, until i surface back in society. one good Dakota hailstorm, and your tent is history. - a fancy debris hut will stand forever, and you can always knock it down and leave no trace.


there's definitely a middle ground there, sure, between carrying shelters and carrying multiple tools, and their combined mass - that's why i like hawks and machetes - they are light for what they do, and they can do just about anything.

tools can help you do other things besides fire and shelter - that's mainly why i carry mine consistently in the wilderness deserts, rainforests, arctic tundra, desert islands, snow country, above timberline, and even out to sea on a few occasions.

once a bear destroys your tent (or even a herd of marauding voles), or everything goes overboard except your tools that you are connected to, you will know why carryng a shelter is not always the answer. - citified folks will criticize a person who encounters such mishaps as a reckless lout, but to me, their dull lives are enough punishment, i don't need to heap insults on them like they do on people who carry tools and use them in a replenishable ecosystem.

i can't part a line with a siltent, but i can build a hidden shelter that is ten times as good as the best work by Mountainsmith and it won't bother anyone with a day-glo spot on the horizon.

i remember making a platform high up in the trees, in Northern Saskatchewan - not to protect myself from the bears and wolves and moose that were everywhere that trip (which i don't fear anyways) - but to hide from the camp-robbing Kree. - i watched them countless times searching for me when i was just above their heads on my platform high up in the birch trees, which was made of found materials with a hatchet and long knife and saw, and done rather expeditiously, i might add. - try that with a tent or hammock shelter system.

...

to me, it would be a bald lie at best to say that tools are necessary - if you have a brain, and especially some experience and some good technique, you can do fine going naked in the wilderness. ...but when i go out, i want to be the apex predator not live like a field mouse - that means the tools come along, no matter how many ways i can make friction fire with found fuel or shelters by hand....


to those who don't like old fire scars on the land - most of the world isn't England.

Thank God IMHO.

i agree that folks should clean up and stay tidy - definitely. - but the cost of being a fanatic about it is already showing here - going camping is continuously more like staying a hotel with no roof (and sometimes there is a roof!) - there is no reason a child would want to go camping nowadays where digging a hole can get you a ticket, etc.

people that think making a fire is unnecessary probably have no inner child, and if they have children, those offspring probably have something electronic attached to them for most of their adoloescent life. - that doens't just cost them, that costs the world, when man separates himself from his environment, despite his best intentions - i hear the road to Hell is paved with the best intentions, and i can surely see why.

think of man's evidence of use like reading old love letters, and make fish traps with the bottles the bastards leave behind. - we have a massive forestry control bureacracy AND SUPER FIRES in the USA because of resticted land uses, where fuel wasn't burned up by passers-through - not because of their presence. - articles have been written on the safety of campfires that have gone ignored by the Green Religion and everyone who learned everything that they know about bushcraft on TV in the heart of some concrete jungle or in some giant stagnant garden (which is how i see England, no offense meant though).

so when i hear comments about the sloped-foreheads out there making a big mess so Percy can't enjoy his walk with all the petroleum byproducts stuffed in his 400 dollar laundry bag, ...or critics of that ilk say tools are sore on your feet - i think i know the type of person i am listening to. - and i pity them, but not as much as i fear them.

....'cuz i think they will destroy us and them, with their surgical approach to the wild.


....i am just glad to be a bluewater spearfisherman some days.

you can trust the sharks at least.

Peace.

vec
 
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Would have been interesting to have had a Commando wire saw and a sabre cut saw also thrown in for comparison !
 
Again, all this talk of disasters and what happens when a bear destroys your tent is pretty romantic. It seems that with so much focus on remedying these disasters little attention is paid to preventing them, and I'd take an ounce of prevention over a pound of cure any day, but choose your own medicine.

I enjoy the wilderness much more when I travel light, and being able to cover great distances lets me see far more, not less. In my experience it's also a lot safer, most injuries I've gotten came when I was tiered, movements get sloppy and muscles were fatigued and not providing proper support.

The notion that a debris hut provides better protection than a tent is ludicrous (and stand for ever? lolplz). There are some poorly made, cheap shelters out there, but if you think thats representative of all modern shelters you're completely off the mark. And if chopping a bunch of green branches and leaving a big heap of debris is "no trace", then you've misunderstood something about what either a "trace" is, or what leaving none behind entails.

If you can only travel so far, you can only get so far away from the roads and most other people. If I still lugged heavy gear, and then on top of that had to spend a couple hours making a shelter, I wouldn't be able to get very far and I certainly wouldn't have much free time to go fishing. If thats your fancy, all the power to you.

Besides, who's talking about living in the wilderness anyway? Considering EVERYONE here is coming home to a computer then we're all just doing "extended breath-hold visits", yourself included.

Not even going to address the rant, too far off topic.
 
I don't like old scars no matter which country they are in. It has nothing to do with it being in England I am aghast at people that behave like that elsewhere too.

God bollox and any other imaginary friends aside being tidy and orderly is just good practice for me to follow. It extends well beyond just having a tidy camp. How many times have we heard “I lost my knife” or “I have to tie glow tape to it so I can find it”? I have good drills that prevent that. It's in my hand or it's put away. Then there's people that cut themselves doing stupid stuff. The excuse is that if you use a knife often enough you will cut yourself. I believe the opposite; the more you rehearse sound practices the more reflex like they become. The list goes on and on – people tripping over guy lines, drinking from the P bottle, whatever. Accidents can happen but most of the time they seem to boil down to something self inflicted through doing stuff in a haphazard fashion. Being orderly and systematic reduces the chances of a mistake and makes stuff easier.

As for an inner child I'm not sure what you mean but it is clear to me what it is to behave childishly. Children tend to be egocentric and really don't give a hoot about the consequences of their behavior. In what I wrote that applies directly. People that behave childishly and vandalize the environment have it taken away from them by a more powerful authority figure. It is the way of things. Fishing licenses, restrictions on the size of your bag at a shoot, and so on all have a common origin in curbing the live for today and be damned mentality. I don't think that's exclusive to England either. Exploitation of resources such a timber 'cos “my imaginary friend gave me the wilderness as my larder” has meant interventions have been required. Not so long ago there was a run of threads espousing exactly that mentality in relation removing vast quantities wood from parks. I doubt I'm alone in thinking those were motivated by a childish me, me, me and selfish mentality. I suspect that all pictures I see here of fire pits along trails and reports of fire restrictions are a direct consequence of people before not behaving in a proper adult and respectful manner too. If the preceding folk had conducted themselves better I'd be at a loss as to explain the genesis of those restrictions. I know that's a kind of circular logic but I refuse to accept that anyone just made them up for no reason.
 
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I've retired my axes pretty much. My Busse Ak-47 takes the place of a machete and axe, and then I pair it with a Silky Bigboy. Two tools acting like 3. And neither is all that heavy. The AK weighs as much as an axe. And the silky weight less than a machete. That plus my belt knife and leatherman and I'm good to go.
 
SouthernCross said:
Unless you are breaking up firewood thicker than your forearm, or don't have access to a forked tree, why would anyone bother using any of the tools listed (unless it's for the fun factor or feeling the need to justify a purchase :D ).

IMO, the single most effective & calorie efficient way of breaking up wood (up to forearm size) is to use the leverage you can generate with the fork of a tree.

Kind regards
Mick :D
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That's it. We're changing your name to The Party Pooper! You pre-cut that log! Admit it!!!! :D Seriously, that's a great technique, and one that I use, along with knocking off dead limbs from pine trees with a fairly stout dead limb the size of a baseball bat. Much easier than chopping with a knife or axe when in dense timber. I always close my eyes before impact, however, just in case. I've had too many fragments hit me in the face...
 
Here's the deal in my opinion:

Try starting a fire with wet wood, with a swiss army knife.

Then try a big knife.

Then a hatchet.

The an axe.

Then a saw.


When you've done all that, and successfully gotten one going with wet wood, then you will know which one you are going to need in a survival situation.

For my skills, and the level of energy I care to expend, and SAFETY, my order from best to worst is this:

Axe, saw, large knife, medium knife, small knife, hatchet.

All it takes is one missed hatchet strike while you are standing up to cut your leg bad enough to bleed out on the trail.


-Freq
 
Vector and I have the same mindset-the gear that I am interested in is the gear that will get me through an extended social, economical or natural disaster. Thankfully I have a natural corridor in my back yard to get into some really deep, vacant country, if the need arises. If a folding saw only weighs a few ounces, I don't see what the huge deal is about carrying one IN ADDITION to a chopping blade or axe.
 
Yeah, no surprises here to anyone that has cut wood before.

Lumberjacks use saws and axes, not big knives. Obviously, they use big axes and saws, when we would carry smaller one saws, hand axes, hatchets or hawks, but physics is physics.
 
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So we are in the wood and need a fire or shelter or just cut up stuff kuz ya like to. So we aren't gonna kill any trees and want dry wood laying on the ground, Its in the dirt. may have bark hard and dry. Bark is what take the edges and tips off of choppers and saws. also any dirt and dust kicked up from rain or run off water carrying some dirt up against the branches or logs you can do a lot with branches the size of your thumb or so you can snap, but you still need some tools to make things easier. But on old dried squaw wood, it will take off the edges, so what work better in the situation when your knife, saw or axe-hawk-hatchet has some edge but not the hair popping pet or toothy saw you left home with?
 
I sorry, but I really don't understand the question...if it's really a question and not rhetorical.
 
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well a 1x4 inch 3 dollar Smith's arkansas stone can solve the blunt problem on all but one of those tools mentioned above, and that is the saw....
 
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