Splitting Wood...Again

Great thread Simon and I agree that having multiple methods for splitting makes perfect sense and enables the user to decide based upon tool availability, user condition, and environment.
 
If i have Tuesday off, i'm going to vanish into the deep woods away from the prying eyes of the Totalitarian Overlords and film/shoot pictures of splitting a log. Got a spot where there is some biguns....
 
siguy said:
Dannyboy, you should see the standing dead hickory i dropped a while back, about 8-9" diameter. I think it's going to make some nice axe handles, but i suppose it would probably work nicely for a few self bows too. ;)
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I would be shaking with excitement with a good straight hickory tree of that size. :D At one time, I used to trade our Oregon Yew wood staves for osage and hickory staves with a couple of bow makers back East. The postal fees got a little expensive so we stopped doing that (the postman always gave me strange looks when he delivered a log to the house :confused:). Most of my bows now are made of our local yew and vine maple (still miss the hickory).

Axe handles are great projects. Have you made any hiking staffs/sticks from your hickory? Nothing like a good hickory stick for the wilderness trail, IMO.
 
sicily02 said:
Nice Job Siguy, Just like you said in that other thread most times battoning is not really necessary, just grabbing a stick and start carving a fuzz stick is easy to do, even after a good rain most sticks you can carve into a fuzz stick. the outer wood is damp but the inner wood is still nice and dry.

SNIP

I just shaved up the stick into a fuzz stick and showed it to my nephew. He looked at it and said just the out side of the stick was wet but the inner wood was dry.
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Obviously I haven't been around here long enough.

Me, and a couple of my fellow hiker/camper/hunters are really puzzled by the overwhelming interesting in batoning. Almost an obsession, really. In some cases it almost seems to be the reason to buy a certain type of sharpened bar stock...

Even looking at the pics shown by sig guy, you can see all manner of smaller forest debris that would make good tinder to make a progressively bigger fire until you had the size needed. It doesn't go without note that the piece of wood selected was at least partly green, new growth, and straight as an arrow and without obvious knots. Great for demonstration, no doubt. But couldn't you just cut the wood to the length you want since you have a saw with you? Is it necessary to use a saw to cut the wood to the right size for batoning? Two different operations for firewood log prep?


A seasoned piece of wood is just that. Water/rain etc., on the outside of the wood will not rehydrate the wood. You don't need to go into a piece of wood a few inches to get to "dry heart wood" and the other things I have seen described.

Unless wood is submerged (and then only over time) getting it wet is just a small nuisance. As a professional carpenter, I quit worrying about wet wood for use on the job when we had long rains. Even after a week of heavy rain, you can easily slice off the wet portion ( 1/32" - maybe - or so penetration over week's time) to get to good wood.

When we are hunting, we almost always grab a piece of dunnage or 2X4 out of the back of the truck and no matter how soaking wet it is we start the fire with that shaved into tinder. We light with a match, a Bic, and have even started up our fire with the cigarette lighter in my truck. We build the fire until we can get to the size that will burn even the greenest of wood.

Don't get me wrong. I am NOT being critical of sig guy. But in 40 years of camping under all conditions, I have never felt I would gain anything from batoning with my knife, even though on long trips I carry more than one. I may just be ass backwards on something else as I learned to start fires exactly as Bryan described as a Cub scout in the mid 60s.

I wouldn't ask this on the Busse subforum as batoning seems to be one of the main chores for that whole style of knife. But - at the risk of meeting the flames of the bladeforum forge - can anyone tell me why batoning is actually required from your camp knives? Why the fascination?

Inquiring minds....

Robert
 
Siguy that is the same way I purled the logs for my cabins. Only the knife I used was a kukri and the logs were 8 inches plus in diameter. I had to cut several sets of wedges but it worked great.
 
rksoon said:
Robert, I'm honestly not trying to sound flippant :o, but the search bar is your friend:thumbup::
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I have searched the snot out of these forums for an answer before asking as I know the bar stock knife gang will hemorrhage if they get wind of this question.

I see folks having all sorts of fun batoning. I see the happy postings of those that know their knives "measure up" to batoning. I don't know in context of their posts why they are doing it outside of showing the fact that their knife will do it.

I know personally how much fun it is to have a good piece of gear to play with, and finding an almost practical use for that gear is even better. But there is a serious tone to some of the posts, one that hints at it being a survival skill of some sort.

BUT - knowing what me and my fellow hunter campers know from decades of experience -

"A seasoned piece of wood is just that. Water/rain etc., on the outside of the wood will not rehydrate the wood. You don't need to go into a piece of wood a few inches to get to "dry heart wood" and the other things I have seen described."

I still don't get it. Is this a fun camp activity for certain styles of camping? Really, I like splitting small pieces of wood with a hatchet when I am cooking on a day camp or when truck camping. I would get that.

Is this a new defacto benchmark test for a knife? Many beers have been drank and some tobacco smoked around the bbq pit over this activity by me and my amigos. Every Tuesday we get together and burn some meat and then put the rest of the fire in a fire pit and have a few cold ones outside. This subject invariably comes up.

While I am an experienced woodsman, some of them put me to shame. They are just as puzzled as I am....

I know it sounds silly to say (and stupid to have to say), but thanks for not taking this question out of context or the wrong way.

Robert
 
Its purpose is really to start fires when its cold and raining out. When you need the dry wood from inside a standing dead tree because everything else is soaked. the acute angles from batoning also help it burn better, specially when the fire is just starting.

but yes, some people do just enjoy thrashing their knives.
 
One of the most vital tasks I can think of is making a hearth board for a bow drill set. If batoning isn't important than I guess fire isn't either. :D
 
midnight flyer said:
I know it sounds silly to say (and stupid to have to say), but thanks for not taking this question out of context or the wrong way.

Robert
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No problem :thumbup:

Since I am not yet a very experienced woodsman, I have no qualified opinion either way at this point. I am still learning and developing skills, so I have not yet decided the value of batoning with a blade, for me. I have never been in situation so far where I needed fire in a wet environment fast, but the concept of batoning to expose a lot of dry wood quickly seems to make sense to me. Perhaps it takes less time and effort to baton a piece of wood to expose a good deal of dry wood, than it would to scrape the wet outer layer off the same piece of wood? But again, I have no first hand experience, something I hope to change in the future, so I'll leave debating the finer points to those with more first hand experience.

I appreciate Simon taking the time to demonstrate this skill though, as I still consider the knowledge valuable should I ever need to baton. My outlook is that it's another tool in the toolbox. I dayhike and don't really gear up for camping when I do. So I like knowing the fixed blade on me can handle batoning, should I ever find myself needing to do it for any reason. Maybe my outlook will change when I actually get more experience, but conceptually it makes sense. I grew up in Hawaii, and oftentimes, EVERYTHING is wet, I can definitely see the value of efficiently acquiring dry wood in that environment.

And Fortytwoblades brings up a good point about the fireboard, if you have to go primitive. :thumbup:
 
midnight flyer said:
"A seasoned piece of wood is just that. Water/rain etc., on the outside of the wood will not rehydrate the wood. You don't need to go into a piece of wood a few inches to get to "dry heart wood" and the other things I have seen described."
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Lay a piece of seasoned wood on the ground in New England for a winter.
It will be wet. Maybe too wet to get a good fire going.
Heck, it's hard to keep a woodpile of stacked and split dry here.

I think batoning is a welcome skill that is handy in a knife-only survival scenerio. Knowing their chosen blade is up to the task is very comforting to some.



Nice demonstration Simon!:thumbup:
 
Dannyboy Leather said:
Robert, I can certainly understand some of your observations here. I think too that sometimes this ancient mundane chore receives too much attention when evaluating some cutlery. However, it (batoning with knife or hatchet) is still a worthwhile skill that has some value when the need arises.

Being a carpenter, you must know that there is a huge difference between kiln-dried lumber and the structure of a piece of wood found in the woods or forest. This would not really be a fair comparison based on the changed molecular structure of the kiln-dried wood.

Here in my part of Oregon (the high desert side), just dropping a match will produce a fire. Dead dry sticks everywhere in an environment that only receives 12-inches of rain annually. The real skill is in keeping your fire localized. Rarely do I need to produce fuzz sticks in this environment. However, in parts of the Oregon Coastal Range - considered 'rain forest' - constructing dry fuzz sticks or split wood is often a must. There have been times when I have been hunting or backpacking in that area where I needed to go down into a log several inches to find dry wood (even Lewis & Clark often failed to make fire here in the wet winter). This was work for only the diligent axe in these massive Northwest trees that often receive 170-inches (or more) of moisture annually.

Environment is eveything when selecting tools and the skills necessary to survive. We (me too) sometimes forget that we don't all live in the same neighborhood. :)
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Nicely done.

What Robert and others fail and continue to fail in understanding is that
A) We all dont live in dry or semi dry climes.
B) In a survival situation fire may indeed be needed immediately to perserve ones life under a multitude of circumstances. This in turn makes whittling for 30 mins-hr to have the perfect wedge, wedge extension and flat edge to split unadvisable. Seconds do count.
I would like to see someone in my environment build a wedge kit with a saw cut a clean log and a wedge extender in the time I have already chopped a soaked wet small tree, split it and have a fire going strong. It aint going to happen. Oh and I do it all with one tool Only a 7.5 inch razor sharp chopping blade.

My survival students in 10 years have never come close. I can see it now someone circling the drain and hypothermic trying to whittle a wedge when a knife and a branch will do.:rolleyes: Can you do this without a large blade? Sure, just vary the size of wood you are after, with a large blade you get more dry kindling for the same labor is all.

That all said I do like the wedge technique just it has its place and time just not when time is vital and its life or death.

Your mileage may vary.


Skam
 
Les said:
Knowing their chosen blade is up to the task is very comforting to some.
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Knowing all your gear is up to the task should be comforting to all as the crystal ball some own seems to be out of stock for everyone I rescue from the bush.

Skam
 
I COULD baton a log for a fire in a survival situation, or i could just simply pull my heat sheet over me, pull out my candle and light it and get warmed up very quickly that way. The last thing i want to do in a Time Critical Survival situation is EXPEND more energy finding and chopping or batoning logs.

Maybe once i have warmed up under the heat sheet (& candle) and i have assessed my situation, will i venture out and gather firewood. And to be quite honest i aint going to be batoning that wood. Around these parts its a simple matter of walking forward a few feet and pulling apart a cedar stump. Bone dry on the inside even after 200+ years of rain. A few quick shavings, some kindling, and the fire is going.....heck i'll start the fire in the middle of the stump if warranted.......
 
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Dannyboy Leather said:
Being a carpenter, you must know that there is a huge difference between kiln-dried lumber and the structure of a piece of wood found in the woods or forest. This would not really be a fair comparison based on the changed molecular structure of the kiln-dried wood.

Fear not. I haven't seen kiln dried wood in use for a very long time. Expensive to buy, it can be very difficult to use as many don't know how to dry wood properly. The wood I was referring to in my post was plain sun dried structure grade pine, hemlock or fir, or in the case of the dunnage, mostly some kind of oak. Still wet when cut into by me, the dunnage is usually only dry on the outside. It is used for skids, etc., for equipment in jobsite deliveries. I use the clean stuff to bbq with, and yes, I do split it with my hatchet for easier burning in the smoker.

Here in my part of Oregon (the high desert side), just dropping a match will produce a fire. Dead dry sticks everywhere in an environment that only receives 12-inches of rain annually. The real skill is in keeping your fire localized. Rarely do I need to produce fuzz sticks in this environment.

Now that, I can relate to! Our state lives in constant fear of fires as we don't have the resources to fight them We are currently in one of the worst droughts of the city's history, with a little less than 14 inches of rain recorded last year. As it is, we are lucky to get 32, but 14? Ouch.

Environment is eveything when selecting tools and the skills necessary to survive. We (me too) sometimes forget that we don't all live in the same neighborhood. :)
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Yes, you are right. I forget we don't have remotely similar climes. Even though we have different seasons, we don't see anything remotely close to even 40 inches of rain most of the time. 100+ inches of rain would certainly make a huge difference in how you approach your kit when planning your days out.

I appreciate your thoughtful, intelligently written response.

Refreshing! :thumbup:

Robert
 
Great bit of info there. I amma tell my dad to use a wedge out of wood .. every time he needs one he drives down the road to get a metal one. I should just make him a wooden one! I will give that a try once my back yard dries out and I can actually walk.

Thanks, Simon :thumbup:
 
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