Process wood with 4" knife?

Rucker and 1234, thanks for the videos....they are great. Gives me some new skills to work on.
 
I presume you need to baton wet wood to get to the dry inner wood
Once you have the dry inner wood you can start a fire
Once you have started your fire, you can put wet unsplit wood on the fire

Then you only have minimal need to baton wood
So cut small diameter wood with a saw
And a 4" knife will easily met your needs to baton wood

Makes too much sense?
Or have I missed something?
 
The belt knife is more than enough, you don't even need the saw. Of course it's smart to carry a saw and an axe.
I learned the split wood fire from Ia woodsman and it was an eye opener for wet weather.
I won't get into the whole batonning debate.

Splitwood fire with just a sak farmer
[video=youtube;f8aFSgk-1eQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8aFSgk-1eQ[/video]
 
I am too lazy to read all the other responses (just being honest) but I will give you mine.

It depends on what you want to do, and what you need to do.

If I simply want a fire, and I am not particularly interested in developing knife skills, I would seek out cedars and grab some of the many dead branches that always seem to be plentiful near the base of the juvenile trees (at about waist level). These are identified easily as the branches that briskly SNAP off when bent by hand. I then process them by hand and break them to desired length...no need to split because they thin out considerably toward the tips. Use the tree bark as spark catchers and build the fire up from the thin twigs.

If I want to develop some knife skills, I will seek thicker branches and whittle them to thin sticks and use the shavings as starter. This method works well for many types of wood and almost any sized knife (2 inch folder and up).

We camp with the local scout pack occasionally and the pack has a no saw/no fixed blade/no hatchet/no axe rule that is strictly enforced. You would be surprised at how even young boys can break dead fall into manageable pieces when necessary. Simply find a couple healthy trees growing close together and use them to break your larger sticks. Another method is to simply "feed" the longer branch into the fire and let the fire process the wood for you (once you have it going).
 
hi It´s good to know to process wood with 4" blades or folding knife but I prefer to use my 5" blade ;-)
 
We camp with the local scout pack occasionally and the pack has a no saw/no fixed blade/no hatchet/no axe rule that is strictly enforced. You would be surprised at how even young boys can break dead fall into manageable pieces when necessary. Simply find a couple healthy trees growing close together and use them to break your larger sticks. Another method is to simply "feed" the longer branch into the fire and let the fire process the wood for you (once you have it going).

Wow, that seems a bit draconian. Is there a reason for this? I can only wonder how a young boy is supposed to learn to use the tools of the outdoors?

Carl.
 
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