A Comprehensive Guide to Choosing a Survival Axe

one thing I get asked all the time by people is what Act should I buy I can't tell you that but what I can tell you are a few guidelines to take into consideration when buying xanax now if anybody ever tells you you need to buy this ass that's the axe for you they're wrong they're simply wrong and axe is like a pair of shoes I might put them on and absolutely love them but then you put them on and you get blisters and your feet hurt you're like these things suck same goes for an axe I might use it and absolutely love it and then you try it out and it's just not working right for you lucky for you though today that's all gonna change I'm gonna give you some guidelines around buying an axe what to look for and if you're totally new to this say you're coming to a class or you're just getting into the bush craft world what do I need what should I think about like what I don't even know much about an axe we're gonna fix it all I promise we're gonna fix it all right now most important thing that you need to be honest with yourself when it comes to making a decision to buy an axes so what is the purpose of buying this axe that really falls in my mind into three different categories and I break them categories down into specific fire creation and utility so let's start with the specific category so when I talk about that what I'm talking about is that you need an axe for a very specific reason and that might be just splitting firewood that's the only reason you need this axe or you might need the axe fur on the back of your ATV because you're clearing trails or creating trails so there's axes specific for this stuff they're splitting malls there's double bit axes with different bevels on each side there's all this craziness so there's a ton of stuff out there but if that is why you're carrying that or that's why you're gonna buy an axe to carry then that is a whole different category of things but it's important I mention that because some people might have that special need for an axe but probably most of the people watching this they're not gonna fall into that category if it's their first axe because they're buying it to go out in the woods with the axe so you're gonna fall in then one of the next two categories and next one we're going to talk about his fire creation now you're not gonna actually make a fire with the axe itself but if you're buying the axe to primarily use to process firewood so let's think your Upper Peninsula Michigan super cold or - boreal forest in the winter and you know you're gonna have a lot of dead standing frozen trees and you got to cut them things down and you got a buck them up or cut them into sections and then split them up because you need a ton of good firewood to get you through the day and the night then that is in itself a category that you need to identify with and in the third category is the category that I fall into myself and that is utility category now with the utility category the the whole mindset around that is you're carrying the axe as utility tools a multi-purpose tool that you're gonna get a ton of jobs done with so it has to be very multi-purpose for you so you should be able to chop down a tree split logs buck logs but then you should also be able to carve with it Drive in tent pegs maybe process game if you need to quarter it up do all these different things with that axe now honestly out of those three categories you need to make an honest assessment because it seems very glamorous - right away say oh I want my axe to do everything but maybe that's not what you need if you're literally gonna just use your axe for that firewood work like I talked about put yourself in that category because nothing is worse nothing is worse than buying an axe or seeing people buy an axe and they strap it on your backpack and never use it and trust us we know us experts we know because we could tell if the maxes you're used or not so don't be that guy okay so now that we had our three categories laid out put yourself in one of those categories it's literally gonna like drive your axe selection just like down I'm gonna say 80% of its already like it's there okay now what you need to know and if you don't know this you need to know this there's three components to an axe that are gonna change those three categories include weight length and shape so let's start with weight we have light weight up to heavyweight now axes can vary anywhere from a half pound head all the way up to five six seven pounds so just this hunk of metal itself can weigh up to five and six and seven pounds the main thing that you need to realize when it comes to weight is that the heavier the axe the more penetration into what you're going to get so in simple people terms what hell does that even mean so if we take a five pound chunk of metal and drive it down into the ground it's gonna probably indent the dirt a good amount but if I take a one pound and I do the same thing with the same amount of force it's not gonna drive into the ground as much or I'm gonna have to put more force behind it in order to make it equal what that five-pound weight did same goes for an axe so when it comes to weight it depends on how big of lumber you're going to be cutting the bigger the lumber typically the heavier the axe the smaller the lumber the lighter the axe so back to our purpose-driven decisions that we talked about earlier if I was cutting down just nothing but big lumber to build a cabin okay so twelve fourteen twenty inch logs for some crazy reason I want a big heavy axe to be able to do that because I'm gonna get more force with that it's gonna cut deeper into those trees and allow those trees to come down a little bit easier but if I was gonna just be pointing a stick like this there's no reason I need five pounds of ax weight to cut into this thing one two pounds even a half pound would probably do it next act shape now when I say Akshay I'm not really even talking too much yet because this is a little bit more advanced of the actual shape you can see what this looks like compared to this one I'm not talking about that what I'm talking about is what the actual bit shape is so what I mean by bit shape is how steep that bit is in the bit on an axe is this sharp part right up through here so an axe can have either a very sharp bit meaning that it is very pointed okay very steep or it can also have a very thick bit so it can be really big like this so where my fingers are touching that's the sharp part of the axe at least that the fake axe were playing with right now so if I would take something like this a big thick axe bit and I would drive this down into a stump it's gonna push that wood apart really quickly because once this sharp section gets in and starts to drive the rest of the act acts like a wedge and pushes that wood apart so if we're splitting up firewood that would be a great great scenario but then if we take an axe that's very narrow okay so looks like this super sharp at the tip and then very thin through the rest of the bit and I would drive that down into a piece of wood it's not gonna push the wood apart as much maybe it won't even split maybe the axe will just get jammed inside there so that wouldn't be a good option for splitting out wood but if I wanted to carve something that's gonna be the perfect decision that very thin bit is gonna allow me to just skim right across the top of whatever I need to carve if I would take that thicker bit though that is more like this shape over-exaggerated of course and try to carve something I'm just not going to be able to get in there because the sides are starting to hit it and it's just not fine enough to do the carving I need now if you take a look at these two axes the axe that I'm jiggling right now has a very thin bit compared to the axe that I'm jiggling right now so this axe on this side is going to split wood a little bit better than this axe and this axe because it's thinner is gonna do much better job carving than this axe hope you get a point so understanding that bit shape is very very important for the fact again if we think about the purpose that we're carrying the axe if you're carrying it primarily for utility let's say and you know you're gonna be just splitting some small sticks but then you're gonna be carving points may be carving cook's systems with it shaving off bark you're gonna want that thinner bit you're gonna want something that's more like a knife blade but if you're going to be in the woods literally chopping down trees and splitting wood the primary amount of time then of course you're gonna want that thicker bit you're gonna want something that's gonna help split out the wood just that much faster and lastly is handle length now when it comes to handle length what I can say without pulling out my sign kissed coat and stuff like that is that the longer the handle length and heavier the head the more force we can generate with that axe and that is important to just understand that that we how much force do you generate depends on how long the handle is and I say that because of this simple fact that if we break ourselves down in them categories again so we say the fire making that we're chopping a lot compared to utility of carving we don't need a lot of force when carving we don't need a lot of force when driving in a tent peg we don't need a lot of force when splitting out small lumber we do need a lot of force when chopping down a tree or splitting firewood so that alone just thinking about that should start to help you decide on okay should it be a really long handle being 36 inches or should it be a real short handle like 19 inches and with that said I think that it is important though because now most people are probably gonna find themselves in that range of 23 to about 12 14 inches and how do we make a good decision in that range so here's my recommendation for that if you are carrying the axe for utility purposes and you're going to just be traveling around with it a lot you're gonna be splitting stuff at all that utility stuff you know what I'm talking about at this point 12 to 19 inches is going to be most ideal I can't tell you again specific because it's gonna depend on you I'm a big guy and this axe handle itself small it just doesn't it's fine it works great for me everything I need to do from chopping to splitting to carving this thing works great and this handle is 15 inches if you're in that fire-making category do you have your axe specifically for fire making I would say 19 up to 23 is going to be good but if you're hardcore fire making maybe just a little bit longer to start to get close to 30 inches and if you are still like that I have no idea now you have me more confused than ever just think about this think about your purpose is it more utility is it more fire creation we're not even talking about the specialty stuff and if it's fire creation how big of a wood are you actually going to be cutting and processing and how much of it that's directly going to impact weight the heavier the head and the longer the handle the further on the utility side you go for all those little camp chores with minimal pipe chopping and cutting is going to reduce that head size and reduce that handle size and if you find yourself somewhere right in the middle of all of that do you think I'm gonna be doing all of that and I really need something then you want to find something middle-of-the-road so best middle road option that I can give you is you're gonna want something around a two and a half pound head with about an 18 19 inch handle that's gonna just fit most people and that's it that is my run down my overlying topics and things too take into consideration when you want to buy an axe I think that's gonna help a lot of people because I know this is a question I get asked all the time again I can't give you super specifics on this exact axe because they are they're literally like shoes I'll tell you a quick little story I had this ax and this is like my favorite trappers hatchet that I use all the time and it fits all my needs that utility category needs I put a longer handle on this I thought it was gonna be a little bit better for chopping and then what I realized was I didn't like the longer handle for the rest of the work I did I put the old handle back on and now it's staying like that so it literally it's just like the flavor what what is going to make you most happy and what's gonna be most comfortable for you that's what it comes down to but I think if you look at those categories look at the different parts of an axe you can narrow that stuff down really easily really simply and have yourself a great quality tool and again don't just put on your backpack and not use it force yourself to use it because once you've learned how to use an axe you'll love it for life this was Dan low a quick ol cracker bushcraft I hope you enjoyed this video as always checks out of coal cracker bushcraft comm and until the next video I'm pumped e I want to go use my axe right now stay in the woods

Channel: Coalcracker Bushcraft

Views: 206,537

Rating: 4.9407601 out of 5

Keywords: Coalcracker Bushcraft, Dan Wowak, Appalachian Bushman School, Camping, Hiking, Survival, Bushcraft, Survival Skills, Bushcraft Skills, outdoorlifestyle, survivalinstructor

Id: iHYQqhTsbPQ

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020