Batoning wood is one of those bushcraft topics that quickly divides the camp, but the real question is not whether the technique is good or bad. Chris breaks down the different viewpoints, when splitting wood with a knife actually solves a problem, and why good judgment matters more than proving what your knife can handle.
A simple question in the Primitive Camping & Bushcraft Facebook group opened up a much bigger discussion: Do you baton wood?
Some people baton on nearly every trip. Others consider it knife abuse and believe an axe, hatchet, or saw is the better tool. Then there are those who say it all depends on the conditions.
In this episode, Chris breaks down the different camps surrounding batoning and asks the more important question: What problem are you actually trying to solve?
Topics discussed include:
Batoning is a useful skill when it solves a real problem. The woods do not care which camp you are in. What matters is whether you can use the tools and resources available to get the job done safely.
Primitive Camping & Bushcraft by Chris Speir is available on Amazon and other major book retailers.
Join the Primitive Camping & Bushcraft Facebook Group and follow Speir Outdoors on YouTube for more practical outdoor skills and discussions.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to the Primitive
Camping and Bushcraft Podcast.
I'm your host, Chris Spear.
So here we're gonna talk about gear,
and gear, and the kind of stories
you only get around about.
It's all about learning, adapting,
and keeping your faith strong.
So whether you're a seasoned outdoorsman,
or just looking to unplug and reconnect,
you're in the right place.
So pull up a chair by the
fire, and let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
Welcome back to the Primitive
Camping and Bushcraft Podcast.
My name's Chris Spear, and today,
we're gonna go over a few things.
A few days ago, I asked a simple question
in the Facebook
group, "Do you baton wood?"
That was it, that was a simple question.
But like most simple questions in woods,
it opened up to be a
much bigger discussion.
So some folks said that
they baton wood all the time.
Some said that they never baton their
wood, and never will.
And some said a real bushcraft knife
ought to be able to take it.
And others said, if
you're beating your knife
with another stick, you
brought the wrong tool.
And honestly, I really
comprehend both sides.
I see what everybody's trying to say.
But anyway, today, I really
wanted to go over this question.
So welcome to the show.
(Chris laughs)
It looks like it's fixing to rain.
It's about 900 degrees outside in a
thousand percent humidity.
It is about two o'clock in the afternoon,
and everybody's like,
"Why are you doing it
"at two o'clock in
the middle of the day?"
Well, I don't have an
opportunity to do it anywhere else.
So once you get past all the arguing,
the real question about
batoning your wood is not,
is batoning good or is batoning bad?
The real question is,
why are you batoning
wood in the first place?
I'm not gonna have any
kind of knife internet drama.
I'm not loyal to any knife brand.
I have my preferences,
but I'm not loyal, I guess.
And I'm not trying to
prove that your knife
is tougher than somebody else's.
So I have my knife that I use,
and I use it for what I use it for,
and everybody uses their
knife for what they use it for.
And this can be a
very, very long discussion.
So you have ones that say,
"I baton every trip."
Every trip I go on, I baton.
And these are usually the people
who see batoning as normal.
It's a normal part of their fire prep.
They use their knife as a splitting tool.
That's what they do.
And especially for
whenever they're doing kindling
and getting ready for like stoves
or wood burning stoves or the such.
And you got smaller than
wrist size type pieces of wood
that you cut with your
folding saw or bow saw or buck saw.
And for them, it's just part of the
rhythm of their camp.
I personally believe
that I and one of those,
I could fit into two of
these categories today,
but I could fit into the
category of I baton every trip.
But then there is another camp,
another category of I never baton.
I never baton my wood.
So let's slow down.
What is baton in your wood?
For those newcomers
listening don't understand it.
So essentially what you're doing
is you're taking a mallet or a stick
and you are using it to beat your knife
through another stick,
usually wrist size or smaller.
And I go over all that inside my book,
primitive camping in Bushcraft.
But you're splitting the wood
to get to the drier stuff on the inside
or you're splitting it
down to make it smaller.
And you're working on a cooking fire
or something like that
with a wood burning stove
or something or you
just need smaller kindling
to start a fire.
All right, so batonning is using your
knife to split wood.
The first camp is people that baton
every time they go into the woods.
The second camp or the
second group of folks
is gonna be the never baton
at all, never baton group.
These group of
individuals never use their knife
to split firewood at all.
Now, these folks, they see
it as abusing their tool.
They see it as they
are abusing their knife.
That their argument is
usually you carry an ax for this.
You carry a hatchet, you carry a saw,
or just get better fuel.
All right, that's
pretty much their stance.
As far as the debate within
this Facebook group topic,
that was the stance of
all these individuals.
Now, I poured over all the comments.
I read through every single one of them.
And I'm really, really, really
seeing a bunch of different
groups within this one group.
And it's crazy to see
because unless you sit there
and read through every comment,
you got new people
all the way up to people
that's done it for 20,
40 years, 30, 40 years,
50 years in some cases.
So these folks
are not entirely wrong.
A knife is not always the best tool for
splitting your wood.
And that's something
that we should get back to
a little bit later.
A knife is not the best tool for
splitting your wood.
It will work.
It will do what you need it to do when
you need it to do it.
But it is not the best choice.
So anyway, the third camp
is probably where I land the most
or where the majority of
you folks listening to this
will land the most.
It depends on what's going on.
Do you have wet wood?
Do you have cold weather?
Are you limited on your tools?
Do you need drier inner wood?
Do you have dry ground?
Do you have plenty of
pencil and thumb size sticks?
And fair weather, all that
changes the answer as well.
So this group depends
on the situation, right?
So far we've been abaton every trip.
I never baton and then it
depends on the situation
or it depends on the camp.
And the last group said this.
Some people pointed out
that if you know how to gather
and process fuel properly,
you may not need to baton much at all.
But that is worth paying attention to.
Skill often removes
the need for extra work.
So those four different groups,
and that group was asking a,
they were saying that we're
asking the wrong question.
Do you baton your firewood?
So that's why this topic
gets people all spun up
while it gets them all bent out of shape.
They're all answering
from different places,
different sets of
woods from different tools
and different experience levels.
And here comes the rain.
Like down here at camp, what the heck?
So we have a tarp over
us, keep us from the rain.
So, but that's what it is.
Is they're all
answering for different places
in their experience.
Different woods, different tools,
different experience levels.
And with that, the real
question started to show its face.
And I love this because all
the comments in this group
always shine through and
come out as another question.
And what I really
like about the questions
is that it lets us know that,
hey, not everybody's on the same group,
or are same level, or in the same camp.
Not everybody is
doing things the same way
that you would do them.
And that's what I
really love about this group
that we're in, is it allows
us to show our skill level
and not be afraid to
show if you're new or old.
And that's awesome.
But the real question should be,
should you baton your wood?
That's the real question.
Should you baton your wood?
And I really think that
the better question is,
what problem are you solving?
Not should you baton your wood,
but rather what problem
are you going to solve?
Problem number one.
(birds chirping)
Do you have wet outer
wood after it rains?
It's starting to rain right now.
The outside of the
dead wood may be soaked,
but the inside could
still be dry enough to burn.
Batoning lets you split that piece open
and get the unused heartwood,
or the usable heartwood.
Then, is your firewood kindling size?
Do you not have
kindling size wood available?
Sometimes your fire does
not need another big stick.
It just needs fine, smaller pieces
like the wood burning stove.
It needs fine, dry fuel that will
actually catch fire.
And batoning can help
break large pieces down
into manageable size kindlings.
(water splashing)
We just kind of
mentioned this in that one,
stove size wood.
Are you using a wood
burning biomass stove?
Are you using that?
And what I love about a
biomass is you can burn leaves,
you can burn pine
cones, you can burn trash
if you gotta burn trash,
as long as you're not
cooking over a grill,
you know, using a pot.
But if you're using a small
twig stove or a rocket stove,
and you know, I have a rocket stove
that I like to use every once in a while.
And I mean, these things are great.
Now Minuteman stove sent me
that rocket stove to test out.
And dude, I'm telling you right now,
this rocket stove is amazing.
You can even use wood
pellets in it if you want.
But are you using some
kind of a stove out there,
like a compact campfire setup,
or, you know, are you
using full branches in it?
And these full branches may be too large
that you need to cut down to size.
So you get out there
with your little folding saw
and you cut your folding saw,
cut the little things down,
and then you take your
knife and baton it down
if you don't have a hatchet.
And I see that point of view, I do that.
Personally, I do that.
I will use that sometimes.
And when you're splitting them all down,
it can make feeding the fire a lot easier
and a lot more control.
If you're, let's say you're
splitting down some hardwood,
it's gonna make your fire
burn a little bit hotter.
And I don't know.
The lack of tools is
another one of these things
for these questions.
So what problem are you solving?
Are you solving a
problem of a lack of tools?
Sometimes you don't have an ax.
Sometimes you forgot it.
Or, in a case where I saw on one of those
alone TV show episodes,
old dude had to hike 10 miles to his
brother in the woods.
They just given him the bearing and
followed the compass,
but he lost his ax
somewhere in the woods.
That happens.
Sometimes you're traveling light.
You don't wanna carry an ax.
Some of these axes are
two pounds or bigger.
Some of the hatches are over a pound.
Splitting them now can
just make life a lot easier.
And once you get to the point where you
don't have the tools
to actually split it,
batoning is a viable option
and it is a practical answer.
Now, here is my favorite one,
my favorite topic, my favorite question
within these questions is
what problem are you solving?
It's an unnecessary habit.
Think about it.
How many of you have unnecessary habits?
A lot of us do.
A lot of us do unnecessary things,
but it's a habit that we go through.
It's a motion that we go
through when we get to camp.
It's something we enjoy doing,
but it's not
necessarily needed or wanted,
but it's just a habit.
It's just something that we do.
Sometimes people baton
because they saw it in a video.
And that is what a lot of people do.
They follow these
bush crafters on YouTube
and it's not really necessary.
It's an unnecessary habit.
There is dry fuel everywhere,
but they spend 10 minutes
or so beating a knife against
the piece they're trying to split
just to make them feel better,
to make them feel like bushcraft,
to make them feel like
they're getting out there
to bushcraft.
And there's been a lot of these topics
that we've been going through
in the perimeter camping
and bushcraft group is,
what is bushcraft after all?
Why?
Is it more towards
keeping alive a tradition,
keeping alive the old
ways of doing things?
Because in our modern age,
a lot of it's not necessary at all.
So the unnecessary habit is not skill.
It is basically performance.
So are you getting out there and
skillfully doing something?
Are you going through a
performance and performing it?
So once you identify the
problem that you're using,
the technique either
makes sense or it doesn't.
So what problem are you solving?
Do you have the wet outer
wood, the kindling size,
the stove size woods,
the lack of tools are
an unnecessary habit.
So that's gonna bring
me up to this point,
which is my take.
Here's where I land on it.
I'm not against batoning.
I'm not against doing
things without reason.
In South Mississippi,
wet wood is a real thing.
I cannot tell you how many times
I have gone camping on the river
and the river just went down
and all the wood had
been underwater for a month.
And humidity, the rain, the damp ground,
the rotten outer bark,
sometimes it makes fire preps so
frustrating as aggravating.
Sometimes you can't find
a piece of lighter wood
in the middle of an oak forest.
And I know a lot of folks
say that, but you can't.
What I found that works
in a situation like that
is the bark that sloughs
off or, what's the word?
Exfoliate, not exfoliates,
but anyway, every year it sheds the bark,
the cypress tree, the bald cypress.
Every year it sheds its bark off
and that bark is like gold.
It's starting to fire out on the rivers
because the South Mississippi swamps.
Cypress trees are everywhere.
And all you gotta do is
just make it real fine,
throw it in here.
It's got the oils in it
and it catches on real good.
But me, me personally, I like a saw.
I will take a saw and
I will cut my saw down.
Most of the time I don't even do that.
I'm gonna be honest with you.
A lot of times when I get into the woods,
after spending as much
time as I do in the heat
and I get out there in the woods,
I'm gonna drag a limb up
and I'm gonna put that
puppy across the fire
and I'm gonna let it burn in half
and let the fire split my wood.
I'm not gonna split the wood.
I'm not gonna waste my energy doing that.
But if I am, I'm gonna use a saw first.
I'm gonna take a saw and cut it down
in four or five foot long chunks.
And then after that,
I'm just gonna put it
and let it burn in
half and then burn in half
and then stuff like that.
It's very controlled.
It's very quiet.
You're not letting anybody know
that you're doing it that way.
And it's extremely efficient.
I can saw a ton of wood relatively quick,
especially with a bow saw.
And I'm not worried about anything.
I could cut relatively
decent fuel size diameter logs
with a bow saw and pile that stuff up.
Now, an ax or a hatchet,
sometimes if I'm going boat
camping, I'll bring an ax.
If I'm taking a boat
with me out on the river
or something like that, I'll bring an ax
and I'll use that to
split a couple of logs.
But to be honest with you,
I really don't split a lot of wood.
I really do not split a lot of wood.
If I'm at my base
camp, like if I'm hunting
and I tend to do that all the time,
primitive hunting while camping,
I'm not worried about the weight
because I will bring it in my boat
and I will bring it out to my camp
and I will just sit there
and do what I need to do.
But if it comes down to it,
a knife can baton my wood
just as well as me splitting it.
So, and I learned something a while back
is that, you know, a
little sapling is about three,
maybe four inches around.
You can use a knife and
baton it through a sapling
and cut a sapling down with it
and you beaver chew that puppy head.
You know, it's just a
knife is very versatile.
So, to answer the questions simply,
baton when it solves the problem.
Do not baton just to show off.
I know some of you are, a
lot of you in this group
are content creators and a
lot of you do it to demonstrate.
I get it, I understand it.
But for the main people
that are in the group,
the individuals that do
not do this for a living,
the individuals that are here
to actually learn something,
you don't have to baton your wood
every time you walk into the woods.
If it solves a problem, do it.
If it does not, you don't have to.
Uh oh, fighter jet just
fell out of the sky over here.
So before I baton wood,
I always ask myself a few questions.
And this is like a real quick
subconscious type thing.
It's not me just sitting there,
okay, let me break out the checklist.
Is there already fuel laying around?
Do I need the inside
of a log for any reason?
Is the wood too big for
a fire that I'm building?
And I've never met a fire
that the wood was too big.
Other than like a twig
stove or biomass stove
or something to that effect.
When I get out into
the woods, the bigger,
once you get a good set of
coals, you got a big oil log,
that's less wood that
you got to continuously
put onto that fire.
Just being honest.
Especially overnight, I
usually save my larger laws
for overnight.
And that way I have a nice bed of coals
to cook breakfast on in the morning.
So if there's plenty
of firewood around me,
I'll go gather my firewood first.
And I tend to do this
when I get to somewhere,
I'll get my firewood before
I start setting up my camp.
I'll designate where I want my fire
and I'll start piling
firewood up left and right.
Then once I feel like I got enough
firewood that evening,
not for an entire
trip, but for that evening,
then I'll start setting up my camp
and then I'll start a
fire and I'll start cooking.
If I'm outside and it's wet,
and I need wood that's dry
on the inside to start a fire,
then yes, I'll baton some wood and I'll
feather stick it down.
But what I found with
a lot of the wood here
is once you get that
stuff, a couple of sticks,
feather stick like
that, you start a fire,
it dries out the
relatively small stuff real quick.
And you will be amazed at
how quick it really dries out
that wet wood whenever you stack it up.
And I'll stack it up in a teepee fashion
and it dries that wood real fast
and it just starts slowly burning.
And that works for me.
That is how I do things.
That is my order of
operations right there.
So wet wood is the strongest argument
for batoning your firewood.
A small cooking fire, you
don't need huge chunks of firewood
because basically when you're cooking,
you're gonna cook on
coals majority of the time.
And rake some of them coals to decide
if you need to throw a
couple of logs on there
to heat up a little bit
real quick or whatever,
if you're trying to boil
some water or whatever,
that's fine.
But the majority of the time,
you're just going to be
cooking over coals anyhow.
One of the other questions
that you can ask yourself too
when you're doing this is
do I have a better tool?
Do you have a saw available?
A little chunk of hickory.
Hickory is hard to split.
Sweetgum is impossible to split.
You're not gonna split a piece of
sweetgum with a knife.
I can't say impossible.
I've done it, but it's hard.
Sweetgum pops and crackles all night
and don't even burn efficiently.
But sweetgum is gonna
be very hard to split,
especially with a knife.
And I know some of you
folks got something like that
in your neck of the woods
to where you have that problem as well.
There's always a type of
wood that is harder to split
and you know to stay away
from it with your knife.
Am I doing this
reason just for the camera?
Am I splitting this
wood just for the camera
or can I just throw it on the fire
and let it burn in half
and keep doing it that way?
I'll be honest with you,
I don't even do it just for the camera.
Not even for all my
spare outdoors content.
I do not do it just for the camera.
There's a verse in Proverbs that says,
"Wisdom is the principal thing."
And that applies here
more than people may think.
Wisdom is not just knowing a technique.
Wisdom is knowing when to use it.
A wise person is not
gonna force one answer
onto every situation.
A wise person is gonna pay
attention to the conditions
when you get out into the woods.
Is it wet?
Do you need to split this?
Are you gonna be wise about
what tools you need to use?
Do you need to use your knife to do that?
A wise person uses the
right tool when you have it.
A wise person does not let
pride make the job harder.
I could do this and I'm gonna do it
or I'm going camping with a buddy.
I'm gonna show him that
I could split all my fire
with my brand new knife.
Because when you get out into them woods,
pride is gonna break
gear and waste energy.
Wisdom is really
gonna get your fire going
and get your firewood
collected and all that good stuff.
Or are you gonna get out
into the great outdoors?
And are you gonna use the
tools that is available to you
to split the firewood?
If that be your knife
and a mallet, go for it.
There is no wrong answer when it comes to
pruning a camping and bushcraft.
There's only an outcome.
Same thing could apply to survival.
There is only an outcome.
If you need a certain outcome,
then go for it.
Do what you gotta do to make it work.
So this week, here is my challenge.
Next time you go to camp,
next time you reach for
your knife to split some woods,
stop for a second and ask,
am I solving a real problem?
That thunder's kicking.
Next time you go to
your camp, ask yourself,
am I solving a real problem?
Do I need dry inner wood?
Do I need smaller kindling?
Is this the best tool that
I have to split this wood?
Talking about your knife.
Or am I just doing
something because I saw
other people do it or I saw
other people talk about it
on a groove?
And that question really,
really, really does matter.
Bushcraft is not about
proving how tough your knife is
because you're gonna be out of a knife.
I can promise you.
Eventually you're gonna be out of a knife
if you keep running it through that wood.
The woods do not care
whichever camp you were in.
Of all those groups of five individuals,
the woods don't care.
The woods only cares
whether your fire gets lit
and actually the woods don't even care
if your fire gets lit.
But it comes down to it.
It's the television of the woods for you.
It's warmth for you.
It's safety for you.
It's cooking your food safely for you.
Boil in your water safely for you.
Start to see the connection.
A fire equals safety,
whether it be from your food,
from your warmth, from your water.
And if you have to use your knife,
and if you have to use your knife to split wood
to safely drink some
water to keep you alive,
it's worth it.
Plain and simple.
So, hey, thank you so
much for joining me on this.
Really do appreciate
everyone that comments,
likes, follows, and shares.
If you like it, share it.
Swing by Amazon, pick
up a copy of the book,
"Perimeter Camping in Bushcraft."
Join the Facebook group,
"Perimeter Camping in Bushcraft."
And follow me on
spreadoutdoors on YouTube.
I'll see you next time.
And remember, in all
your ways, acknowledge him,
and he shall direct your path.
God bless you.
(upbeat music)
(fire crackling)