It was always amusing to see Les Stroud not bring a sheath knife on Survivorman. Since the cult of the survival knife means asking 'what's the best knife?' is guaranteed to get a massive amount of replies. Oddly now he has a knife to sell (see the 'Les stroud reviews Doug and Bears kits thread', he now thinks one is essential :-)

But is it:

https://youtu.be/vJS1SepHop0

I totally agree. Batoning is totally unnecessary. I have lit numerous wood fires over the years - for cooking, for warmth e- on one memorable occasion as a homing beacon for an incoming helicopter, and i have never felt the need to baton anything.

Most of the time i carried some sort or another of an SAK, but for the last thirty five years or so, it has been a multi-tool, either a Wave or Skeletool and they have served well. I do have some fixed blade knives which I carry from time to time.

I have always been able to find abundant dead wood which has served fine as fuel. Just break it up into length manually, and light your tinder. These days and for many years past, i have gone to some alternative stove - alcohol, white gas, propane, or canister as more efficient and safer.

If for some reason, you absolutely need to split logs lengthwise, carry an axe or pulaski and be done with it. Knives are for cutting.....

I too would not baton with such a small knife as in this video. That´s why they invemted the Skrama.

Wow! I'm surprised that moron didn't lose fingers the way he swung his knife into the block with one hand and the the hand wrapped around the block! I hope this wasn't filmed by a member here, it was painful to watch.

Yeah, the Skrama is a beast! I have the stainless version given to me by a friend. It's a great knife! I have the Jääkäripuukko, too. Remarkable knives the money.

But it´s not a bad way to use a wedge. But in that case I would like to have a decent one made of metal.

I've always felt that people who use their knife as a hatchet, are probably the same people who use their knife as a screwdriver, are probably the same people who use their knife as a pry bar. That's not what it's made for. Get the proper tool. More efficient. Much safer.

Add a handle to the metal wedge and you get a hatchet.
I would take a hatchet. It is the right tool for the job.
My knife is a Mora and I wouldn't use it for splitting wood
And let's remember, thinner branches that do not need much splitting.

Actually, one time I had a longer piece of dead wood, and didn't even bother to saw it in half.
I put it in the fire, and fire did the work of cutting it in half.

I carry a knife because I *LIKE* to carry a knife. Sometimes a couple of them.

But I can not defend the necessity of carrying a knife against the reality that I can do pretty much everything I need to with a set of EMT shears.

I have to wonder about a supposed “survival expert” who appears in a instructional video out in the snow, wearing blue jeans?

The first clue that the video would be waste of time was the text below it. Take note: I've never once saw someone call people that disagree with them 'snowflakes' and then heard something useful dribble of their mouth. This one was no exception.

A knife is a hunk of steel, no more and no less. Some knives are more suitable for batoning and some are less so, but certainly some of the best knife makers I've ever heard of feel a quality knife should stand up batoning just fine. I'm not even sure why it's controversial. If you don't want to baton with yours, don't do it. But to insist no one else should smacks of a thick blend of arrogance and stupidity.

Knives are made by humans, and things made by humans can break. Will batoning wood with a knife break it? Maybe. Sometimes it breaks axes. A guy I know posted pics of this at another forum a couple days ago. It was a pretty nice Council axe and this guy has a nice collection of axes. If it was made by Man it can break.






I am probably messing up this quote but gist of it is that axes make legs shorter and hatches make arms shorter. That's pretty spot on. It's much safer to split small pieces of wood with a knife than with an axe IMO, and if you use the latter you should consider laying the piece down long ways. For splitting large rounds certainly a maul is better, or a wedge and a hammer. Better still, a hydraulic splitter if your pack is big enough.

Hikermor has often said he rarely needs to cut or split wood. Fair enough, in a lot of cases you don't need to. Certainly a small cooking fire is easily managed in many locations with just what you can pick up off the ground. That depends on a lot of things, of course. In many cases if you want an all-night fire you may have to cut wood (although of course, maybe you won't).

I very often baton wood for kindling. In the area where I live there's a lot of wood but there isn't much for twigs like in some kinds of forests. In the fall you will often have dried pine cones but eventually I usually need to cut at least some wood and sometimes split it. For splitting down to kindling I haven't found anything as easy and accurate as a knife. Certainly it's faster! In the clownish video at the top, I'd have been done cooking and have my stuff packed up by the time the fella had his little wedge made!

TL;DR- Hike your own hike. Life's to short to rant about how terrible it is that other people do things differently than you do. Use an axe, use a knife, use karate like Sponge Bob does! Just don't even thing in your dream at night that your way is the only way.

I always thought batoning was a chicken-and-egg problem. To do it, you first have to carve a baton of sufficient weight and hardness. That takes time and energy. Why not just cut the stuff you need to cut?

I guess if you have a sharpened prybar or demolition chisel and want to abuse your cutting tool for fun, that's your business. I have done it lightly to chisel notches in my back 40 using beater blades, but nothing like the youtube stunts. If you're in a wilderness or survival situation, it seems a foolhardy risk of your blade. I hope you have a backup with you.

I have never carved a baton. I've seen folks do it in videos but it seems like a waste of time.

I think this video has a little bit more realistic viewpoint on batoning.
Batoning Wood with your knife

Batoning is a technique that I reserve for those circumstances when I don't have the correct tools. There are times when all I have is what is my pockets. There is a reason I carry an RSK MK 1 as my primary folder when I am in the field; I know what it is capable of, and light batoning is one of those abilities. There are some knives I wouldn't attempt batoning, so I never carry them in the field as a primary knife.

I have also made more than my fair share of wooden wedges, both skills my grandfather taught me ages ago. There is a time and place for both techniques; to say one is stupid is short-sighted.

People also need to use some common sense when determining which tool is appropriate to use. Trying to split a 25" diameter round with a Mora is not likely to end well. But splitting a 3" round down into match stick sized pieces with a Mora is totally doable.

I suppose a lot depends on thee fuel 9wood) you have available. One of my best fires was fueled entirely by desert ironwood (Olneya tesota), a rther small bushy species. We cookeed dinner on it and went to bed.In the morning, the very sense wood was so hot that for breakfast all we did was place the coffee pot and skillet on the glowing coals and breakfast served.

I have built fires for many purposes, including warmth at night, usually in coniferous forests, occasionally under less than ideal conditions (rainy and wet). You can always in my experience, find lots of small twigs and tinder for starter fuel and dead logs up to 4 inches in diameter. The bigger stuff can be shortened by stomping or dropping a rock. Alternatively, burn them in half, or feed them gradually into the fire.

I have split larger logs for firewood, especially one summer in fire camp where we were cooking exclusively on a wood stove, but we used an axe, iron wedge or a pulaski. In the classic wood stove, you just about have to use smaller kindling.

And these days, wood fires in general are almost obsolete - essentially emergencies only. You have a lighter load if you pack a canister or alcohol stove. Still, it is a good idea to retain the ability to build a wood fire and control it. I am afraid I am pretty rusty.

Thanks Alan for the link. Overall, I think the Dave C. video was quite reasonable. (And the first think I noticed during the introduction was the v-breaker tree behind him.)

He's right that light, shallow baton cuts toward the tip of the blade put much less stress on the blade and handle.

The one thing he doesn't specifically point out is to never twist or pry while the blade is embedded in the wood. That is a classic point of failure for a blade. You can see how he see-saws the knife back out on the same plane as the cut, no side-to-side twisting. That's the only safe way.

It seems like you in USA have much harder wood than we in Finland. We basicly have only have spruce or pine tree and birch which is harder.

The US is a pretty big country with many distinct geographical and climate regions. Where I live in Montana it's a lot of pine but in the midwest where I grew up there was a lot of cottonwood, elm, spruce, etc.

Pine knots are surprisingly hard! They can turn a blade be it axe or knife.

Herman30 raises a valid point: it's hard to compare apples to apples given the geographic spread of our members. We live in different forests. (Though either elm or birch could make a pretty fine baton, if you were in a mood to carve one.)

That said, the basic principle of "don't do dumb things that will break your knife just because you saw it on youtube" travels very well across the globe.

I've batoned a lot of Ash and Oak, and both of those are pretty danged hard.

That´s true. I would and will not force a knife through a knot. As you say even for an axe it is too much.

It's funny, I have batonned with a knife and it works fine IF it is applied correctly. I also baton with a hatchet if I am splitting wood for my small fire pit on my patio. A small maul or dead hit rubber mallet and a hatchet will easily split kindling in a much more controllable manner than regular or long side splitting, and the hatchet wont bury itself in the concrete.

Never seen the need to baton wood with a knife. I always believe in the right tool for the job. Using a knife in this manner, certainly does not apply to that believe.

Not sure if "stupid" is the right word, but batoning is definitely not necessary to build a nice roaring fire - A technique looking for a plausible application..

If you have the right knife it is the right tool for the job of wood processing. That's the beauty of a knife- it can do a wide variety of tasks whereas an ax is pretty much a one trick pony.

Bingo! Would not do it with a small knife (blade length under 5 inches). But with a bigger knife (7 or more inches blade) no problem.