What's the minimum fixed blade size for an effective chopper?

I like 10 inch blade the most, but the absolute minimum for me would be between 7-8 inch blade. I consider 7 inch blade a knife/chopper, and a 8 inch blade a chopper/knife, if that makes sense. I have a 7 inch SCHF37 Schrade knife that is a decent chopper, but not ideal for large jobs.
By the way, the GSO 8 would/will be awesome! I would personally get the SK8, if/when they make it to avoid the LONG wait. The SK10 might be good too, but possibly heaven if weight is a concern.
For me, my absolute favorite chopper is the Carothers light chopper!! Awesome size, weight, grind, ergo, etc. I beat the crap out of mine and it takes it like a champ! If you are determined, you can find one. They are fantastic!
I have a Custom 8 inch blade being made by Shannon Steel Labs. Fit and finish is not as good as the other 2 mentioned, but you can get the same HT, and his grinds are pretty good too.
Another custom maker that would be good would be Gollik knives.
As well as Robert Martin from tearsofthesword.com
Ontario and esee make good choppers, and my small Ontario machete works good, but that does not bite into the wood as deep, great for the money though!
Good luck on the search.
 
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22-rimfire said:
There are various sizes of hatchets just like there are various sizes of knives. What works best is based on your experience and the situation. I think a good hatchet out chops a 9" knife in most cases. But they aren't very handy for field dressing a deer even if the 9" blade is a mite clumsy for me for such tasks. It is also generally easier to carry the large knife in the woods as compared to the normal sized hatchet.

A 7" blade is generally the starting point for a chopper. A 9" knife such as the BK-9 is a common recommendation and certainly does an adequate job for a modest amount of chopping (especially green wood). My personal experience is that I want something 10"-12" long for an efficient chopper in comparison to to hatchet. Added: The thing is that a knife is going to generally be a more flexible tool than the hatchet in most people's hands. It all depends on "how much" chopping you are doing. Batoning is not chopping.
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Good points, and on the size issue, here's my logic. Once you've made the decision you're going to carry big knife on a given trip, it doesn't make THAT much difference in terms of portability to go from say a 7" knife up to a 10". In my case, whether I carry my 7" Schrade or my 10" Junglas, they are getting strapped to my pack and not on my belt, so the 3" of extra length doesn't matter for carrying. But those 3" make a vast difference in chopping efficiency when you're ready to use the knife.
 
If a person is looking for a cheap chopper, the 12" Ontario machete works for that. But I absolutely hate it in terms of using. It in fact was the very first short machete I purchased and then I moved to the Condor Golok and then to the Condor Pack Golok and Village Parang. The size is about the same as the Ontario. I like choppers. They're fun. But I wouldn't want to spend an entire day chopping with either a hatchet or knife regardless.

I tried the Condor Hudson Bay. Ok for light chopping at 8.5" as I recall. The handle is too small for good chopping, but it works like the BK-9 as both a knife and a chopper. Condor made a knife (some would call it a short stiff machete) called the Kumunga which was 10" and I liked that one. It didn't sell and was discontinued. The Condor Moonshiner at 9.5" is an okay chopper and fun.

I agree that once you get to the 9" size (a practical choice for chopping and still knife like in terms of other use), it doesn't take much to jump up to the 10"-12" length which works pretty well. Yes, once you decide to leave the hatchet at home, the big knife can be quite useful for chopping and splitting wood.
 
Thomas Linton said:
Not hardly. :p

It's not just length. A ten-inch Rapala filleting knife would do fine on fish.
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Exactly this.^^^

Design makes a huge difference in performance, whether it be in chopping or any other task you'll use your knife for. Blade length is just one small part of that. Something like handle design can also play a huge role. A generous, well designed handle can allow you to move your hand back on it quite a ways while still maintaining a safe, secure grip on your knife to help add some (perhaps not all, but often enough to suit me personally) of the chopping benefits of a longer blade with a more forward balance without the added awkwardness of that longer, tip heavy blade when choked up on it doing finer tasks.

That said, most knives aren't going to match a good hatchet or hawk when it comes to chopping. The closer you get to that, the less "knifelike" it's going to be for everything that isn't chopping, so you have to pick your design compromises based on your personal needs and preferences.

Every design choice made on a knife has some effect for good or ill; usually some of both if various tasks are being looked at. It's easy to just zero in on one or two to focus on and not the sum total of the design.
 
6" would be a decent all around knife for baton and light chopping and some bushcraft. But for decent chopper around 8-10" and 10-12 for better. Tho like others said design is a must to focus on.

Otherwise just get a Rinaldi axe. Easy to use, light weight and better and more satisfying to use than other axes. Decent sizes too.

know this is about knife choppers but...
 
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I think OP's inquiry leaves too many variables to give a conclusive answer, but I can share my limited experience in this area.

I ditched the 7" Ontario RAT7 because I felt it didn't chop well enough, at least not as well as I wanted anyway. I replaced it with a Junglas and that actually performs quite similar to my Gransfors Bruck Outdoors Axe which is a very light hatchet with a slightly longer handle to give it some speed. The hatchet does a little better at throwing chips out of the wood but they chop very similar otherwise.

The Junglas has been modified a lot since, but here's an older pic of the two together:

32249187930_f85d2631f0_b.jpg
 
Hey Goober, yes interesting post. I agree my OP question could be more detailed, seeing the various branches in this discussion. If I started over , I would word the scenario more detailed, like this: Assume you want to carry a single large knife on a backpacking trip, rather than several specialized tools such as a saw, a hatchet, and a machete, so that you can bring one tool and keep your pack light on this trip. You plan to use this knife to handle tasks that each of the specialized tools would clearly be better at if you brought them all along. Those tasks could include: chopping wood, batoning/splitting wood, limbing branches, clearing brush and vines, digging, processing game, light duty pounding/hammering (tent stakes, etc.), and chopping or slicing food for food prep. In this case--assuming you bring a quality large knife with a blade and handle design that can handle these tasks--what is the minimum recommended blade length that would enable a knife in this role to efficiently handle these diverse tasks? [There, I TRIED. :) ].

I'm fascinated with your experience that the Junglas did "similar" to your GB. GB is a serious quality axe, IMHO, among the very best and worth every penny when you're doing serious chopping. I've tried their small forest axe owned by a friend, that thing is amazing when you want to do serious wood processing. But that's quite an endorsement to say that, at the level of a small-ish wood processing tool (versus a much larger axe), the Junglas was similar to the GB. I've not had the luxury of doing a side-by-side comparison of say the GB wildlife hatchet and the Junglas, but would love to see that. I have seen a review by Cliff Stamp of the Junglas, and also of the GB hatchet, and my perception was that he clearly endorsed the hatchet if you were focused 100% of chopping efficiency with a small tool. But....if you were looking at a scenario more like I described above, where your focus is not 100% what's the best wood chopper, but rather what's the best multi-purpose tool that can ALSO chop some wood, I would be interested to hear his take on that. He seemed pretty positive about the multi-purpose use of the Junglas, for example. But I cannot find anywhere that he has commented on what he thought was the minimum effective length for a large chopping knife.


GooberBoober said:
I think OP's inquiry leaves too many variables to give a conclusive answer, but I can share my limited experience in this area.

I ditched the 7" Ontario RAT7 because I felt it didn't chop well enough, at least not as well as I wanted anyway. I replaced it with a Junglas and that actually performs quite similar to my Gransfors Bruck Outdoors Axe which is a very light hatchet with a slightly longer handle to give it some speed. The hatchet does a little better at throwing chips out of the wood but they chop very similar otherwise.

The Junglas has been modified a lot since, but here's an older pic of the two together:

32249187930_f85d2631f0_b.jpg
Click to expand...
 
I don't consider much under 8" to be a good chopper, and really 12" and above is where performance is at.
 
I have what is essentially a customized/perfected Becker BK2. 5 inch, 1/4 inch thick blade. But it's a FFG down to almost zero, so it cuts like a much thinner knife. If I hold it by the end of the handle, it's got the mass and sharpness to cut like a hatchet. But for most blades, 5 inches is way too small. You really need length to get your blade swinging fast enough. Something 7-8 inches long works if it's thick, or else you'll want 9-10+
 
42, when you get to that 12" and above category, are you thinking something like a heavy-bladed machete, for example the Condor Golok? I adore mine, it has an amazing convexed edge and is an even better chopper than my Junglas and my small hatchets. I think it's a combination of the length + weight + great edge + design of the overall blade/handle. But.....it's 21 inches long, and a beast to carry. I'm too lazy to lug the thing in backpacking anymore :), so it ends up being used at home chopping wood for the fireplace, or car camping only.
 
If you like the Condor Golok, take a look at the Condor Pack Golok (~11" blade) or Village Parang. I'm biased toward the wood handles. The Pack Golok is a chopping machine and will definitely make the chips fly. I would say, better than the regular Golok because it has a heavier thicker blade and a bit shorter in overall length. It is blade heavy (weight forward) which is what you want in a chopper. This is essentially where I ended up in the chopping blade department.

The Pack Golok paired with a folder or small fixed blade would be a good woods combo. The handle on the Pack Golok is long enough for a power two handed hold chopping unless your hands are really big.
 
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OP asked opinions on where a good chopping knife started as to length. I stand by my opinion, tho perhaps I should have said that, to me, 10"@3/16" thickness is the minimum that I consider to be a good useful blade size for serious chopping. If I know that I will be doing more chopping than knifey stuff, I move up to a tomahawk, or at the very least, a BK-4.
 
maximus83 said:
I'm fascinated with your experience that the Junglas did "similar" to your GB. GB is a serious quality axe, IMHO, among the very best and worth every penny when you're doing serious chopping. I've tried their small forest axe owned by a friend, that thing is amazing when you want to do serious wood processing. But that's quite an endorsement to say that, at the level of a small-ish wood processing tool (versus a much larger axe), the Junglas was similar to the GB. I've not had the luxury of doing a side-by-side comparison of say the GB wildlife hatchet and the Junglas, but would love to see that. I have seen a review by Cliff Stamp of the Junglas, and also of the GB hatchet, and my perception was that he clearly endorsed the hatchet if you were focused 100% of chopping efficiency with a small tool.
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Cliff clearly stated his 11" early Busse Battlemistress (around 28-30 ounces) out-chopped his hatchet in absolute terms for any task.

Even basic physics would say that it should: A hatchet can be as light as 17-20 ounces (vs 30 for the biggest knives), but even worse, it has a much thicker edge cross-section because, to optimize its inherent imbalance, it needs to divert some of the imparted force laterally to make big chips... The BM or a Randall Smithsonian are less optimized, but compensate with a thinner edge geometry over a much longer edge, not to mention more overall weight. They do not remove the wood in a similar way: They make smaller chips, but reach the same depth in the same number of hits or less.

I tested a 19-20 ounces Randall Model 12 (14 grind), with a mere 8.9" blade, and it went strike for strike to about 2/3 the depth of what a Fiskar hatchet did. Every 11" blade I owned added 50% or more side by side with the 8.9" Model 12: That matches the hatchet with knives only weighting 22-25 ounces. 30 ounces knives are certainly capable of beating a hatchet.

Gaston
 
maximus83 said:
Hey Goober, yes interesting post. I agree my OP question could be more detailed, seeing the various branches in this discussion. If I started over , I would word the scenario more detailed, like this: Assume you want to carry a single large knife on a backpacking trip, rather than several specialized tools such as a saw, a hatchet, and a machete, so that you can bring one tool and keep your pack light on this trip. You plan to use this knife to handle tasks that each of the specialized tools would clearly be better at if you brought them all along. Those tasks could include: chopping wood, batoning/splitting wood, limbing branches, clearing brush and vines, digging, processing game, light duty pounding/hammering (tent stakes, etc.), and chopping or slicing food for food prep. In this case--assuming you bring a quality large knife with a blade and handle design that can handle these tasks--what is the minimum recommended blade length that would enable a knife in this role to efficiently handle these diverse tasks? [There, I TRIED. :) ].

I'm fascinated with your experience that the Junglas did "similar" to your GB. GB is a serious quality axe, IMHO, among the very best and worth every penny when you're doing serious chopping. I've tried their small forest axe owned by a friend, that thing is amazing when you want to do serious wood processing. But that's quite an endorsement to say that, at the level of a small-ish wood processing tool (versus a much larger axe), the Junglas was similar to the GB. I've not had the luxury of doing a side-by-side comparison of say the GB wildlife hatchet and the Junglas, but would love to see that. I have seen a review by Cliff Stamp of the Junglas, and also of the GB hatchet, and my perception was that he clearly endorsed the hatchet if you were focused 100% of chopping efficiency with a small tool. But....if you were looking at a scenario more like I described above, where your focus is not 100% what's the best wood chopper, but rather what's the best multi-purpose tool that can ALSO chop some wood, I would be interested to hear his take on that. He seemed pretty positive about the multi-purpose use of the Junglas, for example. But I cannot find anywhere that he has commented on what he thought was the minimum effective length for a large chopping knife.
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If you really liked the SFA, try putting together one of these.


This costed me 20$ and will best a small Forrest axe .axes of this size are much bigger than a chopping knife, but one can use a standard riggers axe with a 18" handle and still have a better chopping tool than any knife.


There are knives that chop as well as a hatchet but they aren't really comparable in size...ect and cant do all of the things a hatchet can do.
If someone really tried I'm sure they can create a knife that can really compare to a good hatchet, but you'd be trying to reinvent the wheel and wouldn't have much of a knife anymore anyways.
 
Gaston444 said:
Cliff clearly stated his 11" early Busse Battlemistress (around 28-30 ounces) out-chopped his hatchet in absolute terms for any task.

Even basic physics would say that it should: A hatchet can be as light as 17-20 ounces (vs 30 for the biggest knives), but even worse, it has a much thicker edge cross-section because, to optimize its inherent imbalance, it needs to divert some of the imparted force laterally to make big chips... The BM or a Randall Smithsonian are less optimized, but compensate with a thinner edge geometry over a much longer edge, not to mention more overall weight. They do not remove the wood in a similar way: They make smaller chips, but reach the same depth in the same number of hits or less.

I tested a 19-20 ounces Randall Model 12 (14 grind), with a mere 8.9" blade, and it went strike for strike to about 2/3 the depth of what a Fiskar hatchet did. Every 11" blade I owned added 50% or more side by side with the 8.9" Model 12: That matches the hatchet with knives only weighting 22-25 ounces. 30 ounces knives are certainly capable of beating a hatchet.

Gaston
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Thanks for that Gaston, interesting. Yes I went back and reread Cliff's review specifically of the Junglas, since I own that knife, and here's what he said relative to hatchet in that review, actually the Junglas comes out sounding better than I had recalled as well, though he compared here to Fiskars not specifically to GB (http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/reviews/esee_junglas.html):
"Moving on to some chopping the Junglas was compared to a Fiskars small hatchet, the 14" Sport model. It was immediately obvious that the Junglas could keep pace with the hatchet. Through 82 sections of spruce, pine, fir and birch (2-6" in thickness) the Junglas was chopping with 93 (5) % of the ability of the hatchet in terms of number of chops required to buck a section of wood. This was with use of a full grip towards the front. The grip could be shifted towards the back and the power will be immediately noticed to be greater but security also drops as does accuracy and precision. In short, no significant difference could be seen in ease of bucking wood with the Junglas and small axe in regards to cut speed, precision, or fatigue rates. The slim handle on the Junglas however did not feel as secure in hand asa more filling grip such as on the Chris Caine Survival Tool, but this can be adjusted with a tape or paracord wrap."

And here's what he says in his GB Wildlife hatchet review, relative to large knives, including his comparisons with Battle Mistress as you mentioned (http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/reviews/gb_hatchet.html).

Anyway, though I wouldn't try to claim my Junglas could best the GB at pure chopping without actually testing it, I will say, my experience has been close to what Cliff reported. When I just want to carry that one tool to replace several others, the Junglass has been pretty impressive as a jack of all trades. I'm not convinced I could drop down to say an 8" chopper and get equal performance, but willing to be convinced. :) Junglas 2, anyone?
 
I can't see chopping much with any knife with a blade shorter than 11". The Skrama at that length is a pretty good but not great chopper, although it may work better for me as I use it more. The shape of the long handle allows you to hold it with three fingers and generate a lot of head speed, which may or may not make up for the lack of concentrated weight at the head. The Pack Golok at 11" is a better natural chopper than the Skrama, but I find the 13" Condor Golok to be still better.

My best choppers are the Goloks and the Baryonyx machete but the Baryonyx takes up a lot of real estate, and the big Golok is a little more than I would want to pack on a motorcycle. The Skrama is too long to fit in my saddlebags, but I like its versatility.
 
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