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Don't Baton a Hatchet - A Hatchet does not need a Baton to Work - Splitting wood kindling

Description

While camping I was splitting wood and remembered that I had seen many people show how to split wood with a Hatchet and a Baton, I could not see the reason to use a Baton, some say it's for safety and control. My contention is that a Hatchet or an Ax is a camp or woodsman tool and that the answer is to learn how to use the tool rather than avoiding learning the skill and use a Baton instead.

Now a baton has a useful purpose, or a couple, pounding stakes in the ground and as an auxiliary device to add power to a sturdy knife for splitting, chiseling, and chopping wood.

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Video Transcription

hey man don't do this and I know it's fun

I see people everywhere teaching it and talking about it why did things evolve for my knife to a hatchet in the first place I mean what does a hatchet have as a cutting edge so does a knife what else does the hatchet have it has all this part of the hatchet back here or axe what's that there for the reason all that metal is on there is for weight 1/2 weight

why do you have weight because when you swing all that weight you've put into motion drives the thing through the wood whybut on up through the wood I don't get it yeah I'm not ragging on me buddy I'm just like if you're at a woodsman or whatever you got to learn to use your tools it's like when I watched my dad when he's a kid he's building garages and houses and junk I used to I was a little kid watch him swing the hammer and how he could just drive that nail home and he could be accurate even even up next to like nailing a window frame in just you know just pound that thing in and I used to tell dad well how do you not hit the window you know just just practice you aim you've got weight and you know the weight of this thing is what drives it through the wood why should I have something like this when I Drive this is kind of overstated it just was laying around you wouldn't use something that big but but why white why are you using this in the first place for weight so you can drive the weight down and that the force of that weight the energy drives the point of the axe but a hatchet through the wood the hatchet already has weight that's what the head is you know so you use the head to drive the weight why you can do it one-handed

I see people even baton with a hatchet even even little stuff like this why why are you do it really don't get it I mean you just yeah this is a lot more handy to do this one-handed and hold the stick with my other hand now what do you don't do what do you do so I mean the thing you don't do you never hold up here obviously cuz you miss you lose the thumb you never hold down here close to the bottom you missed you cut off your hand or something you hold in the middle worst case scenario you hit it and and your hand gets knocked away I mean there's your safety I usually hold up fairly high and you know you just you just drive it through you there I mean that's the whole reason for the head on a hatchet or an axe the whole reason and if you don't if you want more control you can like say you get down on finer stuff neck up on it hold closer to the up the neck towards the head then you can do you can do finer work you're still using the weight on the head but you're not using the centrifugal force of having an extended arm out here like when you're grabbing further up you

it's easy to do I mean why putana stuff I don't understand it and I know I get it

yeah I know I'm gonna get people rag on me about it because I mentioned it it's all about the timing everything what are these days I'm gonna see somebody but taunting a full-fledged forest axe that'll blow my mind when I see that so anyway I mean you know just knock it out what's the problem now you see right here there's a problem because there's our knot right there so I don't want to try to split it that way because it's not gonna split through that night so I'm gonna split off this quarter here I'm still kind of diving into the not just a little bit but now I'm kind of out of it what I mean you know one way what do I need to baton this way you know and I can make up some quick some quick kindling pieces just like that you know just is that hard though I've been doing this kind of stuff most of my life which helps right that's where the practicing comes from now whatever I'm doing this I usually wear some leather or some kind of gloves of some sort is obviously the blade of this is a little bit on the sharp side so you know we're we're a little leather glove or something like deer skin pigskin glove or something but look you know why baton why baton that's my point here you know I've got a knot down at the bottom now lucky just a few minutes I've knocked me out a bunch of wood that's more than enough to start me a good fire and I didn't baton anything how did I do that didn't seem too hard you

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Wilderness Innovation

Wilderness Innovation

"How to" for outdoor camping, hiking activities and survival. Some unique equipment and ideas. "Simplifying Survival" is our motto. Follow us on Twitter - WISurvival

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