In the preparedness community there are a lot of ideologies of how people think things work. Sometimes I find these ideologies lacking a realistic thought process. At times, some individuals will place unrealistic demands on themselves such as “I’ll walk 20+ miles a day to get home as soon as possible.” Another one of my favorites is “The cold doesn’t bother me, I don’t need cold weather jackets.” A more recent favorite comment was in reply to someone’s 72 hour bag that contained two individual servings of trail mix for food. The commenter stated “For a 72 hour bag, throw two snickers for each day or six total for the bag, S*** all you really need is water for three days.” Realistic expectations of individual performance and what we carry is something I will talk about in a future blog, I wanted to touch on this subject because it leads into my bias of using a knife to baton vs a chunk of wood.
In situations in which we are batoning and not using the proper tool, a hydraulic log splitter, we are also probably utilizing immense amounts of energy doing other things, whether it is hiking or bugging out or bugging in. It is not feasible to hike 10+ miles, then create a log splitter, cordage, set up your shelter, make dinner, go to the bathroom, eat dinner, make your bed, split wood for fire starting, start a fire and then finally have time to relax. To the contrary, I understand batoning with a knife is “hard” on the knife.
The primary argument against batoning with a knife is the fact that batoning with a knife is hard on it. Yes, striking steal with a blunt object to cut wood can be hard on the knife. Have you ever watched “Forged in fire?” They challenge their knives to a much more strenuous strength test then batoning. Furthermore, I will acknowledge the importance of taking care of our equipment and making it last. I believe most preppers think an apocalyptic event will happen overnight and that is where their mindset comes from.
I have batoned with knives for a number of years. Whether it is to make smaller logs for me to start in my home fireplace, or starting fires out in nature during camping. In my experience batoning, I have never damaged a knife. While batoning, it is important to keep track of your knife going through the wood and what it’s hitting after the wood. Furthermore, it is important to avoid knots in the wood. I personally like to find ground that is easily searched to check for items which may damage my knives. My rationale for finding ground is the ability to search for items which may damage my knives and, due to the ground, I think it is less likely to cause damage to my knife — like batoning on a rock would. I realize there is some energy lost to the ground during batoning, but the protection of my knife is more important to me. I have friends that like to baton on top of other wood. I have personally done that as well and liked it.
In the event of a societal collapse, the reality is there will be a gradual and continuous decline. During the gradual decline, many things will happen. Importantly we will be able to grab last minute items. After the decline is when foraging for materials will come into play. In a true apocalyptic event, this would be easy. Unfortunately, the more realistic situation is one in which our country turns into a third world poverty country stricken with a civil war and hunger. This makes the argument to some point about taking care of our tools. On the other hand, this will also increase our ability to make tools. Between railroad spike knives, the ability to melt metal and forge it to make knives.
Four Horsemen Adventures and Preparedness 