i was just browsing thru Youtube after loading a video of my hooded poncho liner and i had a look at the "big knives" movies.
outside of the safety issues i was thinking that whacking away at a log to cut it was a major calorie burn,these guys were really working up a sweat.i would think you would want to save as much energy as possible in a survival situation.
any ideas about that?

You must be refering to that nuttin fancy dude on youtube. According to him a knife is useless unless it can baton through logs a couple of feet in diameter.

I used to be a big knife fanatic, But I have long since realized I can achieve the same result from breaking dry wood by hand/foot and that most of the value in batoning/chopping with a knife is just for show and not really necessary.

It is kinda fun dropping a tree and batoning it up into pieces for the fire. It isn't a bad thing to know how to do but in a true life or death situation I believe I would try to get the fire going while expending the least amount of effort.

I think there is considerable value in batoning wood to get appropriate thickness of fuel to get a fire started.

Personally, I am not in favor of chopping a branch to get it to length. Let the fire do the work and burn it in half.

If I have to get something to length a small folding saw will usually do a far easier job of it than chopping with anything - even an expensive Scandinavian ax.

I disagree with ILbob's first point and agree with his second.

Wood grows in all sizes in nature. There is some thought that you can split dry kindling from the center of a larger piece when everything is wet, but if you have good, long burning tinder you don't need to.

On the second point, you're dead-on. Start at the top of a long dead tree and work your way down to the thick end, burning as you go.

Given the same thickness a split piece will be a lot easier to ignite than round branch, make getting a fire going much easier in less than ideal conditions. But for that you really don't need a big knife.

I think it depends on where you live but for me I have never needed to baton wood ever. I think it has something to do with the romantic and burly man survival BS that people get fed.

It becomes a "idea" that If you have nothing but your knife and your firesteel suddenly Round dead branches and twigs and such become Fire retardant and the only thing that will burn is that nicely split manly wood logs the size of 100 year old tree trunks.

On the other hand if you DO live in a area where maybe there isnt a whole ton of fallen limbs or trees or such there may be a reason to split wood if only to ration it. Where this kinda place would be I have no clue as if you have trees Im sure youll have fallen limbs.

I also forgot to mention that you can always make a wedge and use a small blade to do the same job and ditch that extra pound of weight.

I just don't "get" batoning. I have built countless fires, using the local resources, and I have never, ever had to baton anything, not even close. Several of these have been under what could charitably termed adverse circumstances. Stomping wood with your boots or dropping a rock on a branch and gathering up the pieces works every time. Maybe it is an excuse to purchase a nice manly blade.

Nowadays, for the weight of the axe, hatchet , or knife, I can carry a stove and enough fuel to go for at least two days, if not more.

Most, if not all, primitive cultures who actually lived in the woods had big knives.

Examples include parangs in Malaysia, kukris in Nepal, tapangas in Africa, and machetes in South and Central America.

Lest someone would say that these are all just 'jungle knives', here is a reproduction of a knife from Europe used between the 13th and 17th centuries. It is over 10" long.

I think the question should be; What did they know about survival knives that we don't?

I think the elephant in the room is the adjunct use of a nice hefty knife as an effective weapon. To that list you could add the Roman gladius, or short sword. It wouldn't surprise me if the groups you list are also more actively engaged in active harvesting and processing of their surroundings than the typical person in our current society.

It's a lot easier to open a coconut with a forward-weighted blade, and that's important because you can't make haupia without coconut milk. ;D

I have the suspicion that in the original cultural context these blades are not regarded as "survival knives," which to us is somehow a special category. They are probably just tools people use regularly, and if you go into the jungle or the woods, you carry the one you normally use for chopping, because you might have to do some chopping there. It wouldn't be unimaginable to carry a smaller knife also, for the more delicate tasks. Alternatively, one could try to make do with the big knife and throw delicacy to the four winds.

A caveat: my familiarity with the original cultural contexts usually involves fruit vendor grannies using the sort of big knife we're talking about to open fruits for me.

A thought: maybe this is environment-dependent? In tropical areas, there are more vines and soft branches, which a machete-like instrument can chop. In northern woodlands, however, you may prefer a hatchet/knife pair.

Can you cut soft hanging vine with a hatchet? Maybe that's a problem.

Batoning is not totally useless. It looks more manly than gathering wood off the ground. If I'm out glamping, I'm not too concerned about saving calories. I'm out there to have fun, beat my chest a little, and not take myself too seriously.

What they know about is there Locations and the use of a large machete style blade in their locations. Also they did not Know technology and some still prefer to not know technology.

You may also consider the age of the blade designs and the age of melee combat between such old cultures.

Neither do I, but I wonder if it's based on both of us living in SoCal? I imagine most of your experiences are in the Sierra Madre, Sierra Nevada, Yosemite, Sequoia areas?

In which case, dry fuel is usually abundant, pine cones make great "starter" wood, half the time we can't make a campfire anyway.

I imagine if I went camping in WI with my wife's family, the constant rain and nuclear-mosquitoes would make getting a fire started a tad more difficult - green wood more common, rain more often than not in summer, or socked under snow (this winter being the exception).

Well, you hit the nail on the head when you said primitive cultures. With the invention of portable stoves, ultralight pack saws and all our other modern gear we don't have to rely on these skills and tools like primative cultures do. I would venture most primative cultures know more about real survival than most of us will ever know(or would like to know) Especially when most of us only venture out into the "wild" for a few days at a time before returning home to our warm houses.

If I was trapped on a deserted island for a couple of years a big knife is exactly what I would wish for. A large knife can do everything a small knife can but usually not the other way around. For a weekend out or a short term survival situation most of us could get by with a very modest sized knife.

I find it is way easier to make a fire that actually stays lit when I use split wood. Partly, this could be due to my lack of experience using exclusively gathered wood, but I figure it's at least partially due to the fact that dry things burn better than damp things (that's also why an evening fire is often easier to get going than a morning one).

Based on this, I find batoning to be a useful skill and something I want my knife to be able to handle - both for those times when I don't want to pack along a hatchet as well as those potential emergency situations where I wouldn't have packed a hatchet to start with.

That said, I don't think you need to get into big knife territory to simply baton. Or at least what I think of big being ... a blade 6 inches or bigger or weighing in at around 1 pound or more (a definition of "big blade" would likely help the conversation).

For example, I've started batoning with my 4" long, 1/8" thick blade and it seems to work fine. A little more thickness and maybe a bit more length would make it better at this particular task, but I don't think you need a huge chopper to process wood in this way, just a strong, solid mid-sized knife.

some really good thoughts here guys,it's great to see this did not drift off into "you need a big knife to stick bad guys and fight off bears"
i was not thinking of Nutnfancy himself,i fact i sort of like his stuff and have told him so,he's not so "end of the road survivalist" as some on the Tube.
also it was the mindless whacking away i was down on and not batoning which is the only way to get dry wood sometimes and some places.i think of it as making small splints for fire starting and not replacing a ax to make billets.i have used my Mora 2000 in the batoning mode to get chop stick size sticks out of broom stick size wood but thats about as large as i would go to avoid busting my knife.also just hitting a knife back to split wood does not seem to burn energy as much as full arm swinging chopping.
of course if your camping for sport or have a cabin with a 50 pound sack of flour and a rifle you can whack away all you want.

As far as pure chopping goes CDOGS, The biggest problem I ever encountered beside the considerable effort vs gain game was my blades chipping out. Partly due to hitting knots in the wood, and partly due to living in northern Canada where a good winter day drops to -50 deg. The one blade I never had problems with was a 25 dollar cold steel kukri machete of all things.

Nothing convinces you not to chop a knife blade into wood faster than having to spend 2 hours grinding out chips.

Actually, most of my experience is outside California - in the coniferous forests of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, as well as a bit of experience early on in Minnesota. For what is basically an arid climate, a lot of time was spend in very damp and drippy conditions at higher elevations, often during winter time and during SAR work. I am sure conditions in eastern hardwood environments, where I do not have extensive time, are different.

Some years ago, I figured out that if fire was really critical, it was a whole lot easier, effective, and safer to pack a lightweight stove and fuel - problem solved, one way or another. If the stove crapped out, I still had a plentiful supply of "boy scout fire starter." With the wide variety of stoves and fuels available today, that is a better and better option.

You raise a really important issue - the techniques and practices that work superbly in one environment may not be best for another - and most of us are at least somewhat localized.

A big knife can do little knife stuff, but a little knife can't do big knife stuff. You do run into the law of diminishing returns if you go too big.

A knife was also primarily a self defense tool back then as well as used for skinning, gutting and building shelters. And it impressed others lol.I carry a survival Bowie myself.

A Bowsaw will cut through a 10cm+(4inches+) Log using 1/4 Kcal of an Axe; which is a far more efficient tool than a big knife. Even using a knife and baton is not nearly as efficient as a good quality 50cm+(21inches+) Bowsaw.

Big knives may be good in the jungle to replace a machete, but they are very ineffective in the Northern Forest.

I would have to agree with you about the bowsaw, but respectfully, not so much the knife comment. Maybe 'overkill' but I don't see 'ineffective'....chopping holes in ice, prying, chopping branches, splitting wood, digging holes in the dirt and many other bushcraft tasks are easier with a large blade.

Here is one representation of a knife pattern (from Blade Forums) that was very popular in Canada and northern Minnesota from the fur trade era. It is the Hudson Bay Knife... The link will take you to some more of these beautiful knives.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/747098-Hudson-Bay-designs

Let form follow function.

Byrd..super knife.i have seen these in a book by Carl Russell about the tools of the mountain men.however in the era before good small saws could be made because of the metals and the proper treatment of those metals that a knife was easy to make and care for in the wild and yes it was a "do everything" tool.
Bruce Z..do they say Zed up in Canada like in the UK?..but anyway good info on the calorie count.thats the stuff i like to see on sites like this.

IMHO, it's a trade off. Chopping tools are more versatile and easier to maintain in the field, but are heavier, require more exertion, are more hazardous to the user, and require the work to be held rigidly or the flexing will absorb the energy of the strike. FWIW, that's my primary grievance with Nuttinfancy's Fiskars axe demo. He's chopping on the middle of a branch suspended in mid air and the thing’s bounding up and down like it's on a pogo stick.

Sawing tools do one thing really well. They cut through hard materials and are generally lighter, cheaper, safer and more efficient then choppers. The downside is it's harder to maintain and not as versatile as the big choppers.

Locally, the ecosystem is primarily chaparral with some conifer forests and riparian areas. My primary wood processing tools would be a brush hook (Kaiser blade) or a fine toothed pruning saw on a long handle.

Not sure how we're defining "big" but I will say this, I never carried a fixed blade until I became and ETSer, and even then it took time convince me that I need one. I always carry a a folder/multi-tool, but now I also carry a 4 - 5 incher when I'm in the bush. Bryd speaks the truth. They're just so versatile. I don't chop logs with mine, but I do use it to pry, dig, chop through ice, split branches to get dry kindling, etc.

Zed up here in Canada

Yes, that is a key point that has not been addressed in this discussion.

Another question to ask regarding "Calorie Burn" is how many extra calories you burn by carrying a "big knife" (whatever that is) around all day long? Or to think of it another way, what other useful item(s) could I carry for the same weight penalty as that 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 inches of steel on my belt?

Everyone's situation and operating environment will be different. Therefore people are likely to come to different conclusions regarding what knives to carry in the field.

In my case, my default is to carry a modest folder in my pocket, and a smaller lightweight folder in my junk bag in my pack as a spare. Since I live/work/play in a region which can have a very severe climate, I generally opt to use that additional weight to carry an extra insulating layer in my pack (rather than steel on my belt). I'm not a gram-nazi, but especially as I get older I like to at least consider the weight penalty of everything I carry.

If I expect to be using a lot of wood (as opposed to a stove), and/or I'm traveling in a mode where weight is not such an issue (kayaking, or pulling a sled in winter), I would opt for a bow saw and/or a small hatchet.

About the only time I carry a fixed blade is when hunting. In that case it is a blade in the 5-6 inch range.

I consider Big to be Two Definitions for knives. For Instance the Becker bk2, While its not a 10 inch blade its still a 1 pound Chunk of wide steel.

For me 4 and 7 inches are the breaking point for small/medium/large fixed blades. Obviously this is assuming the "normal" thickness and width for blade, not like the super thick bk2 mentioned above.

seeing as how i started this mess i'll say that "big" refers to any knife that is made to chop as well as cut or slice.now that's chop and not baton.

My survival bowie wieghs exactly 15.5 ounces. It can be batoned but reports are the saw bach checks up the club quickle. It has served myself, and almost thirty others world wide very well. At less than a pound I doubt it is a massive drain on my colories. Just ol snakes personal opinion.

Well, 15.5 ounces is pretty darn close to a pound. (And, did you include the sheath in that?)

A pound of weight is a pound of weight. Not a "massive" drain on your calories, but a drain, none the less. My concern if I carry that big knife, what else I have to leave behind, to maintain a reasonable carry weight. "Reasonable carry weight" is a debatable term, just as is "Big Knives". What is reasonable depends on ones activity, environment, lenght of trip, and personal needs. Pounds add up, and the less I carry the further, faster, and more comfortably I can go.

I wasn't suggesting that a big knife is not appropriate for some people in some situations. My point is that each peice of gear needs to be evaluated for how likely it is that one needs it, how critical that need might be, and how much it weighs (or how much space it occupies). What to carry and what to leave out is always a question.

In my case, I don't feel that carrying a "big" knife is worth the extra weight, considering how seldom I really need a big blade. Your situation may differ.

Just my opinion.

I would have to agree. You definitely should have a cutting instrument readily available, but it need not typically be very large - something on the order of a Swiss Army Tinker or one of the Leatherman tools has worked for me on numerous occasions in a variety of circumstances. On one trip in Oaxaca a few years ago, like every other sentient male in the vicinity, I carried a machete and found it useful, so yes, indeed, environment and circumstances should influence what you humparound.

What have I most often wished I had carried that I did not have at hand? Either more water, a bit more climbing rope, or on occasion, another insulating layer. Size up the situation and adjust your equipment.

Which is why I love to hear the judgement behind everyone's choices, as opposed to just an inventory of their knife collection...

... and not only operating environment, but also the philosophy behind how you plan to use the resources of that environment. Within the same environment, some will chop and baton a huge log into pieces, others will simply find a smaller piece of wood. Some environments offers a wide range of options, others a more limited range.

Oetzi the iceman carried a small knife and an axe when he died.

Nessmuk liked a folding knife, a roughly medium sized fixed blade, and a double-bit axe.

Lewis and Clark carried 24 large knives, 35 falling axes, 2 hand saws, 4 draw knives, and a bunch of other various knives/axes for trade.

Dick Proenneke had large saws, small saws, a double bit axe, hatchets, a splitting maul, an adze, draw knives, gouges, chisels, and a bunch of other stuff.

Looking at instances of longer-term survival through history, I rarely notice people limiting themselves to one tool. More appropriately, they try to have the right tool for the job at hand. This makes a lot of sense to me, as a survival situation isn't the time to be messing around with the wrong tool or an inferior tool if you don't absolutely have to.

While I can understand one's desire to find that one piece of hardware that can do everything equally well, fact is, it just doesn't seem to exist.

Therefore, I would hope that people realize it's important not to place strict artificial limits on your tool selection.

If I need to fell some trees to build myself a winter cabin, I'm going to start by looking at what chainsaws I can take with me. If I don't feel comfortable using or carrying a chainsaw with me, I'm going to look at what axes and/or handsaws I can take as the next best thing.

I'm not going to limit myself to building a cabin with a large knife just because I saw some guy felling a tree with it on Youtube.

This makes me wonder why people minimize themselves to PSKs/One Knife while on Foot. While in a Vehicle of any sort land air water, You can easily find yourself without your gear. When on foot what can possibly make you lose everything? And even more specific what can make you lose everything except that one trusty big amazing knife?

Hmmm Imma start a new topic on that instead of hijacking.

Imma let you finish, but I replied in the other thread!