Axe Selection and Use

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

more folks Dave Cadbury the Pathfinder school what I thought we'd do this morning is we'd have a discussion about axes in general and remember that when you are selecting an axe for yourself for use you have to think about a what environment are you going to be operating in what's your reason for carrying that axe sometimes that will dictate the size of ax hatchet or belt acts that you decide to carry do you have conveyance if you have conveyance then you have the affordability of carrying a combination of things and back in the days of the frontier a lot of times the frontiersman carry some type of a belt axe or a tomahawk because they also had a larger axe in their train of horses during long hunts and things like that or moving from settlement areas to new areas they would carry the tools with them by pack train that they needed and carry smaller implements on their person that they may need just around camp to process something very quickly on the fly and I think that's an important thing to understand is a large felling axe too big to carry or too cumbersome to carry with you all the time on your person well that depends on your environment if you are in the northern boreal for somewhere where you've got to cut down large hug size trees as Muscatine ski says no you better have a felling axe with you if you're in the Eastern woodlands where you're only going to have to experience that dead winter cold temperature a couple of times a year and maybe only a couple months out of the year it gets really cold enough to have big long fires and things like that if you don't have the right sleep gear then maybe a smaller felling axe or a hunter's axe will do the job for you if you live somewhere where you don't have to worry about any of that then maybe a belt ax or a hatchet can be used for you all the time those are the things I want to discuss with you and then again what these axes will do for you in comparison to each other so stay with me guys and we'll get started with what's on the blanket now okay so real quick let's identify and speak about the axes that we have here before we move on and we'll start over on the far side with the bigger axes this axe is the SI wetterling's bush axis was designed by Les Stroud you can see that this axe doesn't have a lot of use that has some use but it hasn't been used near as much as some of my other actions the reason for that is I found out that this axe is not what I want to use in my environment this axe has a very heavy duty head on it that's almost like a wedge in design it's a lot different than the Scandinavian ground type axes generally are it's more wedge shape so this axe and it's very heavy this axe would be great for splitting wood it has a nice square hammer pole in the back of it for pounding steaks and things like that so it's a very good design concept the problem with this axe to me is the thickness of the head precludes it from being a good felling axe so while I can use this axe to process wood if I can find dead wood I may not be able to use this axe as well for processing something if I need to cut down a standing dead tree or something of that nature this may not be as conducive also for what this head weighs I believe the handle is a little bit short for me generally speaking I want my axe to go from my armpit out to my cupped hand and this one is about a couple inches short of that that's not that big of a deal to me this axe is plenty wheel double for me it's just a head design doesn't make it conducive for what I like to do with an axe it is pretty heavy it's not very well as far as the grind of it goes it's not real sharp it's got more of a wedge to it so for fine carving tasks with an axe it may be more difficult with this than a general Scandinavian design axe that's the main reasons that I don't carry this axe as much as I thought I would when we first picked it up that doesn't mean this axe isn't perfect for the environments that you live in this is my si wetterling's forest axes the full sized four stacks it fits perfect from my armpit to my cupped hand it's got measurement markers burned into the back of it that gives me increments of 24 inches that's about a 26 inch 27 inches overall I was kinda brought tape out here for you guys just so you can kind of compare things and see them visually it's about 25 and a half inches overall and my span from my armpit to my cupped hand is about 25 inches so that's just about perfect for me it's got a lot narrower head design on it as far as the grind goes then the bush axe if you look at them side-by-side this one is a lot narrower here than this one is so this was more wedge-shaped more conducive to splitting while this one is more conducive to chopping but it will also do a fine job of splitting so this is a good felling axe that will do splitting tasks for me as well as felling if I need to cut down a standing dead or standing live tree either one probably of all my axes for a heavy duty wintertime axe this would be my preference for sure and si wetterling's and grants first books Brooks are very good access most of the axe is sitting here are one of those two brands I'm not going to try to compare the two because there are some differences but as far as the cost differences I don't believe that the difference in quality or craftsmanship outweighs the fact of the differential in cost that there is between the two I would buy an SI wetterling's as long as I can get the model I wanted before I would buy grants for Brooks for that reason alone okay this is a fairly large axe but it's smaller in length then the felling axe it's about the same length actually as this bush axe this axe happens to be a Condor this is the Condor Greenland action you can see this one is well abused this axe has not seen indoors in over a year this axe has been used by students it's been abused by children it's been used by instructors at the Pathfinder school is to the left down at this camp for months on end for splitting and cutting firewood

it's got a very 18th century style design head on it that has not come loose yet in any way shape or form and it's held a pretty good edge we've only sharpened at one time in that year and it still splits kindling and splits firewood like a champ and saying anything bad about this axe other than the steel is not the same quality steel as sa weathering is a grants for Brooks this is a 1070 high carbon steel it's not doesn't have the carbon content that these other axes have so doesn't throw sparks near as well the head's not as hard now it may not stay sharp as long or have that razor sharp blade on it that you get on a grand structure or wetterling's but again there's a huge price difference between this axe and if you really worked hard at the sax you could probably get a really fine edge on here that you could probably shave with I've never worked on that hard to be honest with you my testing this thing has really been abuse testing to make sure that it was going to last and there's no doubt in my mind this actual lasts it comes with a really nice leather mask not real final leather masks to begin with because easily come undone but condors leather work bar none is way better than then transferred Brooks or wetterling's as far as that goes for an axe mask okay these two axes are what's called a hunter's model axe and these are about a 19 inch handle there are 20 about 20 1/2 inches 20 inches overall both of these this one's 19 this one's right out 20 and this is called the 19 inch hunter's axe this one is an SI wetterling's this one is the grantors Brooks now you can see both of these have been abused pretty good this one's going to be used by a buddy of mine for a long time none the worse for wear this has been abused by me forever you can see my markings on the back the difference between these two axes really as far as design goes there's not a whole lot of difference in the design of the head other than this one has a round pole this one has a square Pole okay the reason this one has a round pole is this one was made for being the hide off an animal it was made for separating that hide of an animal and that's why it's got the round pole so it's not near as good for pounding steaks as the square pole of the SI wetterling's but depending on your use and your environment what you want to use the axe for you may want this instead of this or you may want this instead of this I happen to prefer a hunter's type axe if I'm in you know less than the most extreme weather of Ohio I can pretty much get away with that type of acts year-round and it does everything that I wanted to do from small tasks to fairly large but it's going to be a lot more work and calorie expenditure to cut a tree down with this than it is with something like this this head is twice as heavy you have more inertia you have to expend less energy therefore it's going to be more calorie efficient and safer than an axe swing like this if you are trying to process large wood okay so the rest of these axes that I have over here as far as the axes go and not belt axis but hatches are all grants furs Brooks models and none of them have been used and abused too bad because I'm not that fond of them to be honest with you this one is a smaller axe this one is about 14 inches overall again this is the grant Spurs Brooks it's got a square hammer pole on it it's got a pretty nice handle on it it does have some heartwood and sapwood in it that can be okay for you but I'd rather have all SAP wood in my handle and no heartwood but if you've got a mixture of SAP wood and heartwood in your handle it's okay once you have to be careful of it's things like run off and checkering or run off in checks and it looks like there's kind of a check right here in this handle it's not a crack but it could very easily be if I were buying an action I were selecting one axe this would not be the handle that I would select because it's half heartwood and half SAP wood and it does have some areas that have potential split you can also see it has run offs all the way up the handle here that could also split out I'm not real fond of that either I like a nice straight grain handle so if I were selecting this axe this wouldn't be one that I bought off the counter if I had tend to compare now the reason I do have this axe is because it's very good for iris a smaller person a person with smaller hands that has a little less strength and acts like this will be really good for processing kindling and is a good mid-range axe especially if you're carrying a smaller knife and I think that is a really important topic to understand and discuss is what other tools are you carrying along with that axe if you're carrying a good sized knife like the Pathfinder Scout that has a pretty good six-inch blade on and you can do quite a bit of wood processing and fine carving with this then it almost makes something like this unnecessary and I would rather bridge that gap by going to something bigger like this that's going to be okay if I got a process fine kindling I'll just put on my knife but if I'm going to process bigger pieces of wood I'm going to use a bigger axe I don't want to use this but if I'm carrying a smaller knife or I'm a woman or a child then this is a good happy medium in there for something that's not too big this is about bedroll size this is smaller this will fit your backpack or right on the outside your backpack comfortably but for a woman or a child it's not a lot of weight to carry this little axe here would be more of a kid's style axe and this was been used a little bit by my granddaughter but not so much by anyone else this is more of a crafting style axe you're not going to split much with this except for fine kindling and you can do that with your knife like I said the same thing with this one this is more of a crafting style axe this is a grants with Brooks as well has a nice big heavy handle or somebody's got big hands like I do much bigger than this it has a little bit bigger head on it than this but you don't have a lot of space between what you're cutting and your knuckles here so you're not going to be doing any heavy duty chopping with this thing you're going to be doing mostly fine carving tasks and processing small pieces of material with this so I would just assume do that with my knife and carry a bigger axe that's just my personal opinion now let's talk about belt axes and tomahawks for a minute this is a belt axe that was typically carried along the frontier this is like an 18-12 style belt axe got a very very small head on it got a really sharp drawing to it it has a little bit of a hammer pole in the back it's got a very flat profile doesn't weigh a whole lot if it's real nice against a haversack or against a shooting bag and it will process kindling very very well but again to me if I'm already carrying a large belt knife I really don't need this I'd rather have something like this that I can process bigger wood with if needed if I'm carrying a smaller belt knife or I don't have a belt knife and Horace Kephart said in I believe it was nineteen ten in one of his books that many hunters didn't even carry a sheath knife because

anything any game animal from a squirrel to a bear could be processed with a proper jackknife so what he's saying in that text is that they didn't carry a belt life per se they carried a folding knife and they reportedly relied on their hatchet to do any larger tasks and there again if you're not carrying a knife at all a fixed blade type knife and all you have is a folding knife or an sak then that would give you good reason to carry something smaller along these lines or something along this line now the tomahawk is a completely different animal than an axe and a tomahawk is not meant as a standalone tool it's meant to be a companion to a larger acts like a felling axe this would be on the horse of the conveyance this would be on your belt for immediate use and it's good for knocking out pine knots from trees things like that quick processing and lending tasks like that you can take the head off you can use it as a wedge pound it with a baton of course you can do that with your axe as well but you can take this one off the handle to do it you can also take this off the handle and use it for a skinning tool so that you have another sharp implement that you can skin with if you want to and it's easy to replace the handle if something happens to it out of natural material where as an axe like this that's actually hung and not just pushed through the head and held by friction it takes a lot more to replace that handle in a wild so something like this is very conducive for carry because of those options especially if you're carrying a smaller knife or you don't have a sheath knife at all but many frontiersman carry tomahawks they also carry belt axes and again they use those for small tasks at hand small tasks around camp but they weren't cutting big trees down with them they were cutting big trees down with felling style axes they were using these things for processing smaller things like kindling okay so again it's all about what you want to carry how much weight you want to carry and what you're going to do with that axe in your situation so let's look at a little bit of task with wood cutting and we'll talk about what these axes are capable of and what they're not okay so the next thing that we have to consider when we're talking about one axe or in a carry is what types of wood do we have in our area that we're going to have to process and is that wood frozen or not in this case this is a slat of pine but it's frozen solid a smaller axe is not going to tackle this near as well as a bigger axe once I get it down to finer splits obviously a smaller actually do the job but in this state it's not going to something like this which is a piece of solid oak which is a heavy grainy dense wood a smaller axe is not going to do near as good a job on this as a bigger one so if I'm carrying a tomahawk let's just say for my main tool and I've got to tackle something like this I'm going to have to get way out here on the edge and split it off and it will split it off there's no question about that a tomahawk will do the job no question and you can see what I'm doing here is I have this axe out here so that if it comes down I'm on my knees so if this axe comes down or glances off there's no way it can hit my body okay so I can split that one off easy enough with the tomahawk no question about it and I can get the job done but I'm just going to have to work around the edges on the outside because for the most part I'm not going to get those things to split from the middle so I'll have to work my way around the outside kind of Beaver to my way in and I can get the job done with the tomahawk easy enough if I go to the center and try to split it the whole different ballgame now all it's doing is bouncing off of that thing but again if I go to the outside I can split jumps off of it all day okay that's what's important understand so using the tool the way it has to be used to get the job done is important as well I can use a smaller tool I just have to attack this a little different way okay so let's take a piece of this white oak and take it in the middle we can use a bigger axe for that easy enough and I'll go ahead and use this condo or axe and I can split that right down the middle easy enough

so the bigger the axe obviously the less energy it's going to take to split that wood the less energy it takes to process that the less calories are going to burn in the process if I have to process a plank of wood like this it's frozen I'm not going to stand it up and try to split it here I'm either going to lay it down on the stump and split it here or I'm going to lay it down on a side Abel here that I can get behind with my legs spread and split here let me grab this I'll grab this bush axe and you can see that bush axe did not do a real good job of splitting that frozen wood as hard as I hit it there we go I had to take a pretty full swing on that to get that to split but again if I mess I'm going into my anvil I've got this out far enough that it's not going to slip through no matter what happens this thing's not coming here it's not going over here it's going straight into this anvil and that's what I want okay let's talk about using a double anvil and for this what we're going to do is we're going to use the stump as an amble and our axe basically to split off this wood without having to move our axe again so we're going to take a swing like this once we get that inside we can hold the axe still move the wood just like this and that will split it off for us instead of having to make more than one swing we just split it down that way just like that okay so if I don't want my wood flying everywhere I can just take a piece of my rope

put a trucker's hitch in it basically just like this and tighten that down turn that around take my axe okay now when I release my knot here I'll release my trucker's hitch I have a pile of firewood all nice and neat and ready I got a couple pieces that are big I want to split them down not a problem like be split again when there's nothing back you can see I got 22 firewood off of that just out of those splits okay and it's all together so now I just put it in my kerchief or whatever I'm using to carry my firewood even pick it up by the rope take it round by the fire dumping them done don't need bungee cords don't need chains anything fancy just a piece of rope from my camp paracord work as well okay so I'm processing smaller pieces of wood now obviously a smaller axe is going to be the better tool for that I can split that stuff right out easy enough with a small axe into kindling but I can do the same thing with a bigger ax if needs be as well now I can use a bigger axe for that same task if I need to I just have to be a little bit more accurate with my swings but I can get those same splits with a bigger ax again you know white oak is a very greeny wood the other thing I can do is I can take that piece and just tap it gently just like that let's put it down with a bigger ax just like that I just have to be careful keep my fingers off to the side I may even want to baton it in a little bit like I then split it down all of these things will work what matters is your safety if you can handle the big ax and you can do small chores with it that's great if it takes a smaller ax for you to do the smaller chores like making feather sticks like this

well processing finer kindling then you need to carry a smaller axe but again everything is environmentally dependent and everything depends on the wood that you have available to you to process as well is it hard wood is a soft wood soft was going to be much easier to work with with smaller axe whereas hard wood is going to be much easier to work with with a heavier Duty acts like the Condor okay folks long Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school I appreciate joining for this short video today on axe use an axe selection I appreciate your views I appreciate your support thank you for anything to you for me for my school for my family for everyone affiliated with the Pathfinder school and sup reliance Outfitters and I'll be back another video soon as I can thanks guys

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