RokJok
Gold Member
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2000
- Messages
- 4,188
Had some wind damage in our NW recent ice-snow-windy-ganzaaa that knocked our power out at the house for 4-1/2 days. Mostly fir branches shed on fenceline. Choppers du jour for clean-up chores were a BM-E and a Gerber Brush Cutter billhook.
The increased length of the Gerber billhook put it nearly on par with the BM-E for chopping this green wood, in spite of the billhook having much narrower stock thickness and a relatively short scandi-grind. The added leverage the longer handle offered, coupled with a billhook's inclination to pull the stroke into the workpiece (vs a blade belly tending to push it away if your stroke is a little shy of the mark), and the smooth axe-haft-shaped handle made the Gerber billhook a pleasure to use.
On these recently dropped fir branches, the Gerber billhook could penetrate as deep (or deeper) than the BM-E. However, it did not clear the chips as readily as the tapered blade of the Busse. The other downside is that its very narrow stock thickness made it less forgiving than the full-flat grind of the BM-E. With the billhook, if my impact angle was a little too shallow, the blade tended to skate out of the cut much moreso than was done by the BM-E.
That long parallel-sided slab of steel on the billhook blade, even though teflon coated, should have bound badly in the wood. But it didn't. I expect that had I been chopping dried hardwood like oak or walnut, the BM-E would have outperformed the billhook many magnitudes of order. Much more readily than the nearly equal footing each achieved in this soft wet wood which yielded very easily to penetration by the blade edges, both the very very narrow-shouldered edge of the billhook and the typical relatively fat shoulder behind the BM-E's edge.
The very narrow stock thickness IMHO is a large factor in why the Gerber could achieve such impressive penetration. There simply wasn't much displacement of the stiff wood fibers getting attempted by the thin blade.
The BM-E offered more momentum due to heavier weight which worked in its favor for chopping the heavier thicker branches. As a downside, as I've noted in reviews in the past, when swinging a 1/4" thick relatively long blade on small branches that are typically zipped off with a flowing stroke and that offer extremely little resistance to the knife, stopping the blade's forward momentum at the end of the stroke can get tiring as you apply counter-force to slow, then stop, the swinging blade. It is however an expected trade-off with a heavier nose-heavy knife.
I still find the Ergo handles a little "tall" (edge to spine) for my small hands. Nothing new there -- always been that way. The height of the handle forces my grip slightly open and I have to exert enough grip pressure to keep the lower edge of the handle pocketed in the 2nd knuckle of my fingers where I can best control the impact angle of the stroke. I expect doing some more cleanup work tomorrow with the Basic 11, with its smaller more-rounded cross-section handle shape, should treat my mitts a little more friendly.
Here's a pic of one of two fence sections that had the 2x6 top rail knocked down and the 12-ga horse wire crumpled down. BTW, all those fir branches on the ground are *not* supposed to be there. They are on the clean-up list. About halfway down that slanted 2x6 you can spot the BM-E and the billhook.
Here's a close up of the steelware.
1 ea BM-E hangin' out.
Penetration!! That was the first swing into that branch and it sank satisfyingly deep. Gotta hand it to the Battle Mistresses -- they are beasts when it comes to chopping.
The billhook and a decent size branch it chopped through with ease. Note how deep one of the first chops sank into the sapwood near the top of the cut, where the flat large chip facet shows.
The increased length of the Gerber billhook put it nearly on par with the BM-E for chopping this green wood, in spite of the billhook having much narrower stock thickness and a relatively short scandi-grind. The added leverage the longer handle offered, coupled with a billhook's inclination to pull the stroke into the workpiece (vs a blade belly tending to push it away if your stroke is a little shy of the mark), and the smooth axe-haft-shaped handle made the Gerber billhook a pleasure to use.
On these recently dropped fir branches, the Gerber billhook could penetrate as deep (or deeper) than the BM-E. However, it did not clear the chips as readily as the tapered blade of the Busse. The other downside is that its very narrow stock thickness made it less forgiving than the full-flat grind of the BM-E. With the billhook, if my impact angle was a little too shallow, the blade tended to skate out of the cut much moreso than was done by the BM-E.
That long parallel-sided slab of steel on the billhook blade, even though teflon coated, should have bound badly in the wood. But it didn't. I expect that had I been chopping dried hardwood like oak or walnut, the BM-E would have outperformed the billhook many magnitudes of order. Much more readily than the nearly equal footing each achieved in this soft wet wood which yielded very easily to penetration by the blade edges, both the very very narrow-shouldered edge of the billhook and the typical relatively fat shoulder behind the BM-E's edge.
The very narrow stock thickness IMHO is a large factor in why the Gerber could achieve such impressive penetration. There simply wasn't much displacement of the stiff wood fibers getting attempted by the thin blade.
The BM-E offered more momentum due to heavier weight which worked in its favor for chopping the heavier thicker branches. As a downside, as I've noted in reviews in the past, when swinging a 1/4" thick relatively long blade on small branches that are typically zipped off with a flowing stroke and that offer extremely little resistance to the knife, stopping the blade's forward momentum at the end of the stroke can get tiring as you apply counter-force to slow, then stop, the swinging blade. It is however an expected trade-off with a heavier nose-heavy knife.
I still find the Ergo handles a little "tall" (edge to spine) for my small hands. Nothing new there -- always been that way. The height of the handle forces my grip slightly open and I have to exert enough grip pressure to keep the lower edge of the handle pocketed in the 2nd knuckle of my fingers where I can best control the impact angle of the stroke. I expect doing some more cleanup work tomorrow with the Basic 11, with its smaller more-rounded cross-section handle shape, should treat my mitts a little more friendly.
Here's a pic of one of two fence sections that had the 2x6 top rail knocked down and the 12-ga horse wire crumpled down. BTW, all those fir branches on the ground are *not* supposed to be there. They are on the clean-up list. About halfway down that slanted 2x6 you can spot the BM-E and the billhook.
Here's a close up of the steelware.
1 ea BM-E hangin' out.
Penetration!! That was the first swing into that branch and it sank satisfyingly deep. Gotta hand it to the Battle Mistresses -- they are beasts when it comes to chopping.
The billhook and a decent size branch it chopped through with ease. Note how deep one of the first chops sank into the sapwood near the top of the cut, where the flat large chip facet shows.
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It was pretty windy here too. I have a huge tree that pretty much lays against my house, and aaallllll night long it hits the side.... I'm kind of hopin' it falls down so I can actually sleep 
It will give me an excuse to break out a MOAB and go to town!!!!:thumbup:
