Tree Cutting

B

burtzolotar

Joined
Oct 15, 2001
Messages
125
I have seen a number of knife reviews of fixed blades (in the 4" to 6" range) talk about using the knife to cut a small tree. What is the appropriate stroke (please describe) and how many strokes should be expected using a good (not necessarily the best) fixed blade knife with a blade about 4 1/2"? :confused:
 
I'm not sure what reviews you are refering to but they may have been talking about using a blade of that size to cut a small tree or a limb down with the help of a baton. A baton is usually another short,handy piece of limb that is used like a hammer to pound the blade thru the tree.You can also use a sharp knife of that size to cut thru at the outside of a bend of a tree or limb that is flexible enough to be bent over.A blade of that length is rarely balanced and heavy enough for actually chopping thru a tree or decent sized limb but I do have an original BKT Campanion that has a 5" blade that has enough weight and an excellent geometry (convex) and a handle that allows me to hold it reasonably securely way out at the end so as to make it an effective chopper for a blade its size.
 
It's remarkably easy to cut green wood of many types with a small knife and baton. Having said that it's also really easy to get hurt since even thin poles can springboard (split up the middle). A person I know here almost lost an eye, and did lose the lens.
It's also easy to split dry wood with a cheap Mora.
Things become desperate in terms of the amount of time it takes - when you move to cutting seasoned wood. It took me an hour as I recall to cut through a log that took just a few minutes with a really good hatchet. A 10oz saw (Sawvivor) would cut through in much less than a minute.
It's worth looking over old threads on the axe forum - and I have details of how I got surprised on my homepage. A cheap light Mora will do just fine, but the safety and time issues are real.
I'm going to see if I can get some short movies made of deliberately springboarded poles and trees. Those should drive home the safety aspects.
 
What Jimbo noted about danger can't be overstated, felling trees is not a trivial job. The main problem is getting the wood to fall where you want it, and not getting in the way while its doing it. I would really caution to stay on wood the size you can actually physically move, until you are very comfortable before moving onto larger wood that once it starts to go you can't do anything to stop it.

Regarding how much time or number of chops, it depends on the type of wood as Jimbo noted. Around here for example from the softest to the hardest is probably a 10:1 difference. As for how you do it, generally you work in wedges with an upper cut at a 45, and a lower waste relief or chipping cut which is straight into the wood. If you work high up on the trunk, and thus are willing to leave high stumps, then you work with full notches that have both upper and lower 45's.

You have a notch on both sides of the tree, the one on the side that you want it to fall towards is lower to help induce the fall in that direction. You can also control the sideways direction by how much wood you leave inbetween the two notches as the tree will torque around the little bit left, angling off of the thinnest part.

As a loose estimate, on a medium class hardness tree, you can probably get 1/4" or so of penetration on a hit with a decent knife on your angled down cut, about half that on the waste relief cut. That is about 50 hits total so its a few minutes work. On a really hard tree, you could expect the total to be way over 100, that is going to take some time as fatigue is going to set it unless you pace yourself which means you use less force per hit. As Jimbo noted, even a half-way decent saw will chew through a 4" piece of wood in a dozen or so passes.

-Cliff
 
Thanks all. I think that Cliff's description of the cut to use answers my question. When off in the woods or dessert alone I want to carry enough of a knife that, if I need it for survival, it will meet the task. At the same time, the knife can't be too big or I'll never carry it. It seems to me that a good quality, tactical, fixed blade of about 4" should be able to take the possible punishment. It seems to me that a tree cutting would be a good test of such a knife's abilities for my survival needs. Does anyone have an opinion about the KA-BAR Impact Series Spear Point with a 3 7/8" 1095 steel blade for this purpose? :confused:
 
I have a USMC K-bar designated as my primary survival knife. The first thing I did when I got this one (It was a replacement for one I left in a car hood,) was fell a 3" pine sapling with four strokes. I was showing off.
The technique I practice for cutting saplings is to rock the knife in with steady pressure. It takes longer, but I feel it's much safer. I've found that it's only good for the width of the blade, though.
You're not going to be able to fell much more than 3" without some sort of axe unless you're willing to toothpick it, and that takes forever. Pine is rediculously easy to cut, but dogwood will probably break your blade before you go through it. If you're out west, mesquite is at least as bad, and thorny to boot.
I'm seriously concidering adding a hatchet head to my gear, and just whittling a handle for it to make carry more doable.
 
You might find baton work more than a little tough using a knife with a false edge on the back...
 
Social Cameleon,

If you are going to field fabricate handles, it will be a lot easier to do with a hawk head than a hatchet head. Take a look at www.2hawks.net for some really fine hawks. See www.hbforge.com for some more economical quality hawks.

Of course, if you get a Two Hawks product you won't be able to bear removing the handle because it is so beautifully finished and fitted.
 
I second m's experience with the BK&T Campanion. It is an amazingly effective chopper for it's five inch length. In my (admittedly limited) experience this is the most versatile and effective compact knife going. I've used mine to chop through branches, split through logs, and slice apples and veggies. If I have a successful hunt this fall I will try it as a deer skinner. Note I said compact, not lightweight; this is one stout knife! If you want lightweight the Kabar impact might be the way to go, but I have no experience with those. I'm surprised Mr Stamp hasn't tested one of these.


Patrick
 
Log sized wood cutting with a small knife really pushes them and is a quick way of finding that hidden fault that years of normal work wouldn't bring out. Or inducing one for the future. Sure survival knives are built with a certain robustness: more steel to ensure they shouldn't break. The best give up little in cutting ability. But in terms of survival tools, and more specifically a knife, you need a little husbandry to keep them working. A calastrophic break is the last thing you need, and its a bit late after the event to find out the hype didn't match.

KarBar's, Cold Steel's, Gerber's, plus a whole host of other mid priced knives will do extreme work, but you are asking for trouble tackling jobs are are obviously bigger than they can chew. Best knives can come a cropper too if you overstep the limits.
Having said that, there are knives that can take this kind of punishment, but in my mind they are built so thick that they lose too much in dexterity and cutting ability. The British issue MOD survival knife springs to mind. A brute of a knife that I hate. In my book smallish knives should cut first; anyway, many small cuts over time will do the job.

Pushing your steel's parameters at home is part of survival education, but when it matters use your judgement and where posible save your equipment for when it really does matter. Think. Most usual wood cutting for survival is for some good wooden stakes, which you can then build bigger things with.

Battons: is it just me or are battons that last more than a few whacks scarcer than rocking horse ****?

I wouldn't advocate starting out with the idea of making your own hatchet handle. Firstly, good seasoned hickory is imposible to find and secondly a loose hatchet head in the face doesn't improve your smile. Anyway its quite a few hours work to make something that has any chance of working.

Off tomorrow to the IWA Show Germany, (Europe's Shot Show), where I might find something to prove me wrong. ;) :D :D
 
Could someone tell me the disadvantages of using a saw?

Cliff's fav Falco is only about 8" long when closed and weights only a few oz.

Ben
 
A small folding pruning saw with an aggressive Japanese tooth pattern (~6 tpi) will chew through wood very quickly, say 8-12 strokes through a medium 3" piece of wood. This is only a few seconds work, and you have cut the wood very close to the ground, and have not left a sharp stump behind. They also need far less room to work than a blade, require far less physical effort, and require far less skill to be used without undue danger yourself or those around you.

The big drawback to saws is that they are focused tools. For example, while you will cut the tree down faster with a saw than your friend who has a decent blade, while you are busy pruning off one limb at a time, he is clearing them off in wide swaths with his blade. He also has a much easier time putting a point on stakes, and pounding them into the ground with the spine (or poll) of the blade. As well then it turns to other types of cutting the blade readily outperforms the saw.

In short, you are looking at overall functionality vs very high performance in one field. You can even the performance out a bit by going with a less aggressive saw. if you move up to 9-11 tpi, the saw starts to become more "knife-like" as it can actually be used to cut many types of materials like rope, webbing and even foods. It will also be easier to use when limbing as it will start much easier on small woods than the ultra-aggressive 6 tpi saws.

Zeta makes some excellent wood saws which I have a few of thanks to RokJok :

http://www.tashirohardware.com/

Baileys offers some really nice ones I intend to try out :

http://www.baileys-online.com/

and the Felco pruners can be found all over the web.

A recent thread you might want to have a look at which includes comments by Jimbo on a folding bow or buck saw with a swede saw blade :

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=192733

There are a number of these models out and they have advantages and disadvantages over the folding saws.

-Cliff
 
"The big drawback to saws is that they are focused tools. For example, while you will cut the tree down faster with a saw than your friend who has a decent blade, while you are busy pruning off one limb at a time, he is clearing them off in wide swaths with his blade. He also has a much easier time putting a point on stakes, and pounding them into the ground with the spine (or poll) of the blade. As well then it turns to other types of cutting the blade readily outperforms the saw. "

I thought of the pointing and pounding parts but it seems that a saw + a 5" heavy knife (e.g Campanion or 5" Busse Basic) ends up being MORE flexable with less weight and size.

I certainly don't think you should consider replaceing your knife with a saw but a 18" ang kola isn't a lot of fun to schlep around either. A Felco saw plus a Campanion or even a 12" light Kuk sounds much more manageable and it seems it will do the same jobs in a temperate forest situation.

Of course I'm old and fat. YMMV.

Ben
 
Yes, pretty much exactly. Any combination of well focused tools will easily out perform any one "all purpose" tool, knives or otherwise.

-Cliff
 
Fellows, just how big (diameter in inches) a
tree are y'al talking about cutting down with
a knife?
Just cutting one down with an axe is work.
Anything more than a sapling would seem to
be beyond a knife's normal capabilities.
 
Fellows, just how big (diameter in inches) a
tree are y'al talking about cutting down with
a knife?
Just cutting one down with an axe is work.
Anything more than a sapling would seem to
be beyond a knife's normal capabilities.
 
Since I started the thread, I'll answer. I was really only thinking of a 1" (at most 2") diameter tree. That is something you might need to cut down (e.g. for building a shelter) in a survival situation.

The knife reviews that I was talking about mentioned a "snap" cut. Can someone tell me what that is?
 
A snap cut is when the knife is "snapped" sharply by flicking the wrist and is allowed to rotate around the index finger. A common technique with machetes is to let the handle swing loose in the hand, held loosely with thumb and inder finger, and when you bring it up to shoulder height the butt of the handle actually swings up past the tops of your fingers. You then bring your arm down sharply, snapping the wrist and coming down sharply on the butt of the handle with the fingers. This causes the blade to rotate around with tremendous speed, because its length amplifies the speed of rotation. The speed you can achive in such a manner is far greater than if you were just swinging it.

-Cliff
 
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