So you simply MUST baton?

[Pondoro2310]

OK, I'm an old coot whose depression era father bought me one knife and one hatchet. Don't break them or lose them! All these guys beating on knives to chop down trees makes me a bit irritated. If you simply must beat on a blade get one of these, a "froe."



Don't use a mallet to beat it either (though Wikipedia suggests that at one point), use a "froe club", I've pictured one below. It is free and you do not want your mallet to look like this.

 

[300Six]

Hear hear! Much too simple and if you get the same fetish groups interested in the beauty of these guaranteed there will be spin-off aircraft-grade 2015 stainless, camo jobs, tactical-grade and magnum versions that emerge. Top it off hundreds of 'new', 'improved' and 'collector customs' will also enter the fray to ensure that you absolutely "must have" the latest one. And then ultimately the Chinese will start making them.

 

[CapitalizedLiving]

I never knew what a froe was until now. Very interesting.

 

[Alocksly]

I got an old froe at the junk store but the local hardware place does carry new ones. I've probably made about thirty cedar shakes with it for small projects and it spends most of its time hanging in my shed. I consider it a specialty tool. It does one thing really well and that's about it.

 

[Bigfattyt]

I'll keep batonning, chopping, and generally running amuck with my big choppers.
That would be a fine tool to have in the stable, though.

 

[Alocksly]

Upon a time, a pioneer/ settler/ backwoodsman, was considered to have a "complete outfit" if he was possessed of an axe, saw, adze, and froe. With these tools you had what you needed to build a stout log cabin with a good shake roof. There's an old story about the first cabin in the Seattle area that spent it's first winter with out a roof because the brothers who built it lacked a froe. (I feel either the story is either an exaggeration or the brothers weren't that bright as I've found you can split shakes with an axe; it's just a lot slower.)

 

[stabman]

That froe isn't any more stout than the knives I use for such purposes, nor do I use a bigger wooden "club".

"Don't baton with your knives. If you simply must, then use this differently shaped knife."

Classic.

 

[Charlie_K]

I have to agree. Maybe it's because I'm so much younger than most, but I don't see the advantage of the froe over, for example, the Ontario RTAK II. Or even a machete.

 

[jmflem]

Hmmm, it seems as though a large fixed blade would accomplish the same task as the froe, yet at the same would be more compact and more versatile. But I agree with you on one point: using a mallet to baton is just plain stupid!

 

[olybears57]

A froe is actually quite a lot thicker than most survival knives, and is ground specifically for splitting, not chopping and splitting. That being said, while not the perfect tool for batoning, large fixed blades work pretty darn well for the task.

 

[Alocksly]

The long handle on the froe also serves as a lever to split off a shake. You usually only need to pound it in to about the depth of the blade and then reef on the handle to split off a shake. Again, it's a specialty tool, great for making a lot of shingles.

 

[Student762]

...sigh...(long extended sigh) and sigh one more time. I believe the point of the post was to use a tool for what it was designed for. A froe is designed to be hit, most knives aren't, I agree that an RTAKII stands up to batoning very well, I for one don't like batoning, but I suppose that is each to his own. The froe does, however, warrant our attention as an intriguing alternative option to batoning a knife. For people like me who don't like batoning then it is very informative. Thankyou for the post.

 

[300Six]

Shake froe at first appears to be dead simple to use but good shakes are supposed to have a taper to them. I holed-up for a few months one winter in B.C. with a beachcomber/tugboat operator who always had a few cedar salvage logs on hand and would augment his income by producing cedar shakes. 'Reading' the wood and judging the thickness was one thing but learning to manipulate the handle during the strike so that the shake was tapered, and flat, was another. Every 1/2 dozen shakes and he'd turn the block over. Hugely labour-intensive! Number 1 grade shakes command a premium price, the roof of a house requires about 4X the actual surface area in square footage of shakes, and there are no convenient machines around that can speed up the job.
Froes are splitters, not cutters and my buddy did not go out of his way to keep it razor-sharp.

 

[Pondoro2310]

Froes have a few other uses.

1) Basket makers like to split thin strips of green wood (they prefer ash) to reinforce and decorate baskets, or to make handles.

2) Suppose you get a firewood-sized piece of a nice wood (like buried in a pile of firewood) - walnut, cherry, or (in my case) osage orange? Inside that piece is enough lumber to make a knife handle or a pistol grip or some other small object, but there is no flat side to let you resaw it. You can use the froe to flatten one side enough to let it lay on a band saw table, then use the band saw to make a really flat side, then slab off your pieces. If you want to turn the wood on a lathe you can use the froe to remove all the sapwood and also make the blank an octagon, resulting in an easier time on the lathe.

3) If you are a real old timer and want to make spoons or tent stakes the old fashioned way (starting with pieces of a tree) a froe is the best way to start out, it saves a lot of spokeshaving and whittling.

 

[smith357]

I don't think I will ever understand the obsession with beating on a good knife. I understand in a true survival situation you do what you must to stay alive, but as a general rule I don't use my knives as a screwdriver, pry bar, or axe. I am a firm believer in using the right tool for the job.

 

[Alocksly]

Me and the wife went camping a few months back a a state park. A couple pulled in to the site next to ours just after dark and the guy starts trying to build a fire. I see him pull out his big knife and start batoning cordwood for their fire and I offer him the use of my axe to speed things up. He declined and his girlfriend sat on the picnic table watching him hack away for another 20 minutes until he'd split enough for a little fire.

 

[Charlie_K]

I don't think I will ever understand the obsession with beating on a good knife. I understand in a true survival situation you do what you must to stay alive, but as a general rule I don't use my knives as a screwdriver, pry bar, or axe. I am a firm believer in using the right tool for the job.

Part of the problem is that the lines have become blurred on what the "right tool" is anymore. Unless you know where to buy them, today's axes are soft steel, and not up to the work of their predecessors. At the same time, knives have seen an upswing in material, construction, and heat treat quality, making them far more durable than their predecessors. The art of blending edge retention hardness, and spine durability, is done by science now, rather than through years of cultivated and obscure experience.

Some knives will do the job of splitting logs through batoning, but they're not meant for it. And then there are knives that will excel at splitting logs through batoning.

 

[dogstar]

I batoned my Fiskars hatchet the other day. The head didn't have enough mass to split the log in a timely fashion, so batoning was the ticket.

 

[MrFrido]

In old times, cleavers like these were used by farmers in my town to chop and split wood and pig bones alike. They were often batoned with wooden mallets or clubs, so batoning is actually nothing new.

 

[Cajun Kamikaze]

A Bowie forged from 5160 batons great and it is a more useful and versatile tool than what you have here.