So why do folks buy giant chopper bowies

RMLamey said:
With a big Bowie or Chopper, I dont need an axe, machete, or any other knife for that matter. Its a matter of learning to properly use a big knife properly, once done its irreplaceable.
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Mr. Lamey knows choppers! I have regretted not jumping on many of his knives when they came up for sale. It would be nice to be able to make my self what ever I wanted in a chopper to test, and experiment.


In my neck of the woods, Dan Keffler is another person who can really show what a large chopper is capable of.



I grew up with an axe. Splitting wedges, mauls, felling axes. My dad was raised a farm boy, and worked as a logger for a few seasons. We heated our home with wood in the winters. They still have years worth of wood stacked up. I have helped cut down, and process trees that were 4' in diameter.

For dedicated wood processing, in large volumes, I would not trade in a chain saw, and working set of axes.

When I use a big chopper, I am doing "fun stuff".

Shiny, pretty, and just plain fun.


When camping, I don't bring axes or hatchets typically (though vehicle camping I often do).

Last overnight canoe trip I took, I just brought a Cold Steel shovel, and large khukuri machete. The wood we were processing was Russian olive. Hard, Tough, and nasty thorns. It is not "axe" friendly from the standpoint of clearing chopping space, and de-limbing it. A long machete seems to work better. I have taken large choppers on that trip before, and the machete worked better for that specific work. (We always have a little hand saw as well).

If I was going into dedicated forest, I might opt for just the choppers and small knives (and likely a portable hand saw).


For some reason, I have laid out a lot of money on choppers, etc, but none on axes. I have hawks, but no hatchets.

I have been on campouts and realized that I had thousands of $ in knives in my bag. Just personal preference, I guess.

I have never had the need to chop down a large tree in the forest while camping. If I did, the axe would be the way to go if I did not have a chainsaw.
 
jimh0220 said:
One word: overcompensation. You fill in the rest.
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Does that mean my many sub-4"-blade knives are undercompensation? :confused:

It amuses me when people trot out misguided Fruedian concepts to explain others' choice in tools (or cars or houses or fishing boats or... whatever). Even he reportedly said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." On another note, Warren Sapp once said, "What I eat doesn't make you (defecate), so don't worry about the taste in my mouth." :D

I enjoy high-quality cutting implements, large and small.
 
I was reading an article in one of the knife mags a couple of years back about the Barker-Crowell cutting competition knife that Browning was making. In that article, Jim Crowell said that he felt that a properly made knife that size was actually a MORE effective chopper than a belt/camping axe of comparable weight, plus useful for other things.
 
I'm gonna come back to state this. A tomahawk breaks, and you can easily replace the handle. A knife breaks, and you're probably abusing it. If an axe breaks, you're gonna have a hard time finding/making a haft out in the woods. When you're using a thinner bar of sharp steel (knife) compared to a heavy wedge on the end of a stick (axe), a lot of people feel more secure with the knife. However as someone said, for dedicated chopping over a long period of time, an axe will be less work, but a saw would be MUCH less. To me it's easier to carry a saw and a chopper than an axe and a smaller knife for weight reasons.

This is why I bring up a machete. It's thin, so people see a machete as weak, but the strength is in the width of the blade, and with the narrow profile it can easily do detail work as well as heavy stuff. Choppers seem to have evolved from this. Thicker for power/strength, and shorter for weight.
 
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