Moving on I put it through its hardest test of the day. I found this old piece of fence post at my father-in-law's and I decided to chop through it. As for the technique I used, I worked my way around the log making fairly wide V notches, until it went through.
This took a while, probably 5-10 minutes, which I think is great. I'm not the most accurate with my blows, and this wood was extremely hard feeling. Half of the time it sounded like I was chopping rock or glass each time the blade bit in...and each time it did bite in. Towards the end my arm was tired and I took a a few heavier swings to try and speed up the process. Blade never once deflected, but just chewed off a chip each time with a *tink* sound.
As you can see in the above pic, it's a fairly good sized piece of timber. I don't know why in the woods I would ever really need to go through something that big, and especially that big and hard, so it's nice to know I could do it without too much trouble.
Also, from my limited experience, I think chopping is a much better test of an edge than batonning...much easier to not hit accurately and laterally stress the edge, easier to bite right into a knot (and there was a small one the blade went right through in this piece), and plus, the edge is taking the force of the blow each time. With batonning a lot of times I feel once you get it started the edge is protected by the thickness of the blade separating the wood and protecting the very edge.
Speaking of batonning, afterwards I did some more of it. This time I used some thicker wood with a wavy grain structure...and again, I was super impressed. This thing just flings the wood apart. Not once did I have to go more than half way through the wood before I could just twist my wrist and bust off a hunk. More making kindling for a fire this thing is going to be a champ. Even went batonned cross grain, although I don't know if that is harder or not on the knife.
Within just a couple of minutes I had dismantled the log
After all that I tried making some more shavings / curls to see how the edge had held up. I paid attention to use the sweet spot of the blade which had just taken all the stress of the chopping and batonning. As you can see it held its sharpness very well.
And here is a small tree branch I took off easily with one swing. I was very happy with the edge retention at this point.
This took a while, probably 5-10 minutes, which I think is great. I'm not the most accurate with my blows, and this wood was extremely hard feeling. Half of the time it sounded like I was chopping rock or glass each time the blade bit in...and each time it did bite in. Towards the end my arm was tired and I took a a few heavier swings to try and speed up the process. Blade never once deflected, but just chewed off a chip each time with a *tink* sound.
As you can see in the above pic, it's a fairly good sized piece of timber. I don't know why in the woods I would ever really need to go through something that big, and especially that big and hard, so it's nice to know I could do it without too much trouble.
Also, from my limited experience, I think chopping is a much better test of an edge than batonning...much easier to not hit accurately and laterally stress the edge, easier to bite right into a knot (and there was a small one the blade went right through in this piece), and plus, the edge is taking the force of the blow each time. With batonning a lot of times I feel once you get it started the edge is protected by the thickness of the blade separating the wood and protecting the very edge.
Speaking of batonning, afterwards I did some more of it. This time I used some thicker wood with a wavy grain structure...and again, I was super impressed. This thing just flings the wood apart. Not once did I have to go more than half way through the wood before I could just twist my wrist and bust off a hunk. More making kindling for a fire this thing is going to be a champ. Even went batonned cross grain, although I don't know if that is harder or not on the knife.
Within just a couple of minutes I had dismantled the log
After all that I tried making some more shavings / curls to see how the edge had held up. I paid attention to use the sweet spot of the blade which had just taken all the stress of the chopping and batonning. As you can see it held its sharpness very well.
And here is a small tree branch I took off easily with one swing. I was very happy with the edge retention at this point.
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