Beginners Guide To Chopping Tools For Bushcraft, Camping And Wilderness Survival

hey everybody coming back at you with a another semi-exciting edition of fun in the woods uh a couple of videos back i did a video uh five tips for the beginning wild camper and uh in that video i showed one machete and one axe but i didn't say much about it now the response to that was uh people were interested i got a few messages uh people saying that they were more interested in machetes and axes especially for the beginner in the chopping aspect of it so there's a lot of safety involved a lot of inherent dangers with chopping tools so i thought they'd be good to go over and do it uh chopping the complete guide to chopping tools for the beginner and even for those of you that are more experienced maybe you'll pick up a few tips here and there so uh we're gonna go over some stuff here in the gear room before we go out into the field and actually do a little bit of chopping get out there and swing a hack swing a machete have a little fun so before that a little bit of information that may help you with your pack out or your loadout or knowing what to carry is whether you're a bush crafter or a camper or a survivalist your tools are going to be classified in two different categories there's going to be contact tools and impact tools okay now basically uh contact tools are fairly safe you can get her hurt with them but they're they're they're fairly safe now a contact tool is a knife okay a knife is always in basically in contact with the work okay there are exceptions a folding saw bow saw or buck saw is a contact tool because you are basically in contact with the work all right so you have control more control over these an axe or a machete is considered an impact tool because the way it works is by impact now the inherent dangers of these axes and machetes and things and the efficiency like i said it leads to inherent dangers so there's things that you need to know especially if you're a beginner so we're going to go over these things uh not much of a reason to talk about saws or knives unless there's a whole lot of response for it but what we're going to do is we're going to go over machetes first a couple of different styles the different styles of axes and then a few thoughts on both types of tools and then we'll go out into the field all right so let's get into it the typical machete that most people are used to and have seen is just what is called the bush machete and this is just typically a machete and most of the ones that you'll see are usually these ontario machetes and sometimes they're called a camp machete and sometimes they're called a military machete and uh these are not really wood choppers but you can use them as wood chopped or choppers a lot of these ontario's come in 12 inch 18 inch and 22 inch and they're more meant for grass vines thorns vegetation bushes things like that not necessarily wood choppers but these are usually what they call latin style machetes or bush machetes this is an ontario and it has the typical ontario handle and it's got a saw back you can't really saw much with it but it's good for notches and it's good for making dust if you want dust for shavings here's another ontario it's got the smooth back but it has what's called the d handle and that's for protection to keep you from smashing your fingers on certain things condor makes a stainless steel machete for wet environments or if you're in the swamps or the wetlands or if you're going to be like busting coconuts or chopping bananas you got a stainless steel version for grass and vines k bar makes one that is called a a grass machete it doesn't quite have the length of the big k bar but this thing has a grind on it that is called a duplex grind where it has a relief and another relief and then the cutting angle and so these you don't have to worry about these things can be kept razor sharp see if i can see yeah you can see right there it has a relief here and a relief here and then it's got the final bevel on the bottom and these things can be kept to a riser razor sharp edge for cutting for uh grass and vines and things so those are your general bush machetes so now we're going to move on to the next style of machete next style of machete is called a kukri and the kukri originated in nepal now the cookery is very um how should i say you you it's it's unmistakable the shape because it has this downward curve to the top of it and normally there's two different reasons for that and it depends on people's opinion but one of them the reason that this is curved like this is because it will the blade will arrive on the work before your hand because you see right here if you're chopping in a fashion like this the blade will arrive before your hand and there's room right here the other reason is instead of having a blade come straight down on the work that if it's angled it'll almost give it a scissor action and allow it to embed in the wood better but i don't really bind to that as much as i do as it being this way now because there's other machetes that are white forward but they don't have this bend to them now the distinction of a machete of a kukri is it has three distinct parts the point and the tip here is for slicing and incising and piercing the curved part is for chopping the the bow down part and then the curved up part up here is for carving and whittling so that's the three distinct features of it this one is from uh ex gurkha house uh imported from the from the from nepal so uh k bar makes a version of it and this is more modern version it looks tactical looking with the the uh rubber uh i think it's a craton handle very very good grip on it and it has the distinctive down drop with the curve like this and uh there's lots of kukris out there this is one that i got recently from honshu bashing and uh it's a stainless steel machete it's hollow ground and it has the distinctive drop in it with the belly and the curve and the point so that those are those are cookers right there and that's that's the distinction of them is that drop all right i talked much about uh sheaths so some of these other sheaths it doesn't really matter these are just these are basic sheaths like the one that this came with i attached a knife to it with a little bit of paracord uh same thing for the k bar i attached a little knife to it but the distinct those are things that i did but in general the kukri will come with two smaller knives now i feel like this this warrants a little bit of information here because a lot of times whenever you hear reviews on these things uh they'll get the machete and it'll be in a sheath like this now whenever you put a machete in a sheath like this sheaves like this that are partially open you put the blade in and slide it in just like that and then sort of drop it down you kind of it's sort of a in and down motion and then you you you clip it but on these type that are solid you want to put your hand on top and when you when you when you put your machete in or take it out you want to put up pressure on it don't put down pressure on it because you may cut into the sheath so what you do is when you get it started in like i said put up pressure on it to try to keep that blade from dragging across the bottom and like when i pull it out i'm pushing up on it now about these two little knives i've seen reviews where people complain that they say one of the knives is dull well that's on purpose that's that's not a mistake let me let me walk a little bit closer because what this is is this one is sharpened to use as a small knife and then one of them will be dull see how dull that is now the reason for that is is if you want to you can sharpen this as a knife but you can leave it dull to use it for flint and steel fire making so that's the reason why one of them is dull right there i just wanted to clarify that that that's that's a reason and there's some uh nepalese names for these two and uh they have separate names and i forgot what they're called you can look them up if you want to next machete style is a prank now a parang originated in either indonesia or malaysia not real sure so this one i've attached to more to the sheath this is a condor now the parang is a wood chopping beast i feel like if it was if somebody told me you can take one tool out to build a shelter and stay warm by a fire it would be the the the parang it is a chopping beast now the characteristics of this thing is basically it's white forward and it has this curve to it at the top and a curve at the bottom and like i said if you can see right here the blade arrives before the hand all right kind of a safety feature now this is a condor piranha condor bushcraft brine that's one version of it this is a condor village parang comes in the sheath leather sheath and i've added a condor knife to it this one has a curve to the back part this one is just ground into a point that's the way most prongs are not a lot of parangs are curved like this and some in some cases some people when it's got a curve consider this to be in a go lock a go lock is similar to a prang i've got one that's labeled as a gold lock i'm going to show in a minute but most of these none of these are ground that i know of none of these are ground flat they're all uh concave ground that way they won't stick in the wood because it's not really a cutting or slicing tool this is a chopping tool all right and that's that's what keeps it from sticking in the wood honshu bashing which i had the kukri from they also make a parang now with this one i have added a folding saw where this way it is a complete kit i have my contact tool and then i have my impact tool so but this isn't ground like your average pararing this is hollow ground so i don't use this for much heavy wood processing i only use this for like where i'm going to be doing small wood processing and vines and grass and whenever i'm in like swamps or wetlands so this it then this thing holds an edge pretty good and uh one other honorable mention let me see if i can find it this is this is a version of a parang and i have it paired up with a little knife this is called the condor mini dooku now with this thing i like to grab the sheath and give it a squeeze as i'm pulling it out and same thing i'm pushing it up but that's a very very small small it's a a dooku machete but it is considered to be a prime now this is one of the kind that you don't need a lanyard because you want to pay attention to some of these machetes in the shape of the handle that if your hands are wet or muddy or snowing or they're sweaty you like to have a a i don't know what you would call this a pommel maybe so that you don't have to put a death grip on it and it won't necessarily slide out of your hand so those are perrings style is the bolo machete now in my opinion what is considered a traditional bolo i don't have you have to look it up online but a a bolo is a machete that has it's very hard to say it's it's straight and it has a huge curve on the end and and it comes back up and over normally bolos don't come to a sharp point this is an ontario sp53 now they sell this it's categorized as a bolo knife but like i said in my opinion this is not a traditional bolo the bolos i think came from i think indonesia i think and uh but i haven't seen them with a sharp point so they sell this as a bolo that is a beast of a blade that is a fantastic cutting cutting tool this thing here is an ic cut machete and some call this a bolo and some call it a some call it a kukri but the thing about it is is yes it has a little bit of a drop to it it has the curve here that comes up but there's no distinctive break in it it's all one curvy line so some call that a bolo but the thing is uh charade makes a blade that they sell and they call it a kukri now the thing about this kukri right here is it's about the same shape it kind of drops down it doesn't have a distinctive drop it has the curve with the point and this part under here and if you can look at that see these two are these two are similar and some sell this one on the bottom as a kukri some sell it as a bolo this top one they claim that's a cookery and as you can see this is you know they call that a cookery but they call that a bolo so i just want to say i want to make clear that the manufacturers kind of warp the meaning of what some of these are but you know regardless of what you call this it's a fantastic blade so you can look at it more and do a little bit more research on it on the the bolo minute ago i misspoke on the bolo the bolo originated in the philippines not indonesia the golock is a machete style it originated in either indonesia malaysia or the philippines but the thing is they go lock some go locks look like this they have a big old curved edge on them like this and some don't now i've been told in the past people get golox and parangs confused and i'm not real sure and there's a lot of different opinions out there especially since all the different knife and machete manufacturers have warped the actual definition of what some of these blades are but my guess is is that the go lock is curved like this and curves all the way up to the point parangs often have a flat cut off on the end instead of a curve all right and this the the cutting edge is one one swoop all the way up so this is this is a condor pack go lock so a go lock is another style of machete another style is called a coping machete now this is an ontario sp8 and i've added a small knife to it i can't remember what that is but that's a stainless steel knife that i use for food prep this one sheath opens up this way and the blade comes out like this now a coping machete is one that has a flat end now they claim that a coping machete is set up as a search and rescue type machete and what that means is because of the flat end you can bust windows out and you can cut people you can cut seat belts and you can cut people and pry things to extract people from mangled cars or even aircraft you could pry open the door of the aircraft this thing is quarter inch thick it's got the creighton handle has a little dip here where you can choke up on it has a kind of a what i consider a worthless sawback on the back because it's just got ribs but i don't know that won't cut wood that great maybe it's meant for ripping through seat belts i don't know maybe there's a use for it but when it's flat on the end and ontario is not the only one that makes a coping machete but if you ever see one that's just flat on the end like this that's considered a coping machete i guess because you're coping with disaster the next style of machete is called a panga p-a-n-g-a panga now the panga originated in africa this is a more modern tactical version of the panga they make more traditional versions like collins uh marbles uh mikasa there's a bunch of different traditional makers of it but what makes a panga what it is is it has the curve all the way to the point and then the back curves up to a point now this is this one is made by a timberline tactical and this is definitely a more modern version of it because on the back it has a glass breaker on the top it has the most aggressive sawback i've ever seen in my life back here and then it has some serrations built into the tip here it has more serrations here and then it has a cord cutter so that's the panga when it curves up like that that is considered a panga originated in africa now this is you know th this is the type of machete that was yes it's for vines and grass and vegetations but it's also designed for for light wood cutting so that's how this differs from the classic bush machete style is pronounced two different ways in old english this is pronounced sea axe uh in old norse this is pronounced sax sax but we're most the general acceptance of this is s-e-a-x c-ax this is just kind of hard to describe it has quite a long handle kind of flat on the top with a drop with just a slight curve to it it's just a distinctive shape now this is the like i said i think this is made in finland this is a terrarava scrama and what makes this a distinctive chopper as compared to the others is to me what makes manufacturers have warped due to the length of these blades what is a machete and what isn't a machete and so when you have to me when you have a machete the full blade length of it would be about 25 to 30 degrees ground whereas a knife is between 17 to 23 or 24 degrees which is more of a it is more of a steeper angle which could roll an edge you could roll over when you're chopping so they make it a little bit you know a little bit more uh what do you call it i don't know if that's obtuse or acute i failed math but what makes this distinctive is what they have done with us so let's see if i can zoom in on this tarava has gone from here to here with 34 degrees and then right here there's about a inch and a half section here that they have ground that is 25 degrees now i don't know if you can see that distinction in it i turn it the right way maybe you can but the beauty of that thing is is that is what and that's why some people call us sax or cx some call it a big knife some call it a machete but that is a distinction on this one now let's just say for example let me pull down another knife here uh right here this is the ontario artak two look at the size of it this is considered this is sold as a knife all right so let's put now uh let's see this is sold as a bolo knife too so let me show you something here real quick uh let me find another one what am i looking for okay let's go with this this is a k bar cutlass now the k bar cutlass i don't know what it is it might be considered a bolo two so let's say this let's say that most people accept this as a machete well look at the length of the handle and the length of the blade say they're almost identical if not even maybe even a little bit longer about identical on the length but for some reason this is accepted as a machete and this is accepted as a knife if you're going to bring a knife as a chopper let's say for example this whole blade has got 22 degrees to it if you're going to use this as a chopping tool i would suggest that somewhere around about two or three inches here when you start sharpening this as it gets dull in the future from here to here you could sharpen this at about 30 degrees so it'll be a little more blunt you could do more chopping leave this about 20 to 25 and then if you wanted to get crazy with it the very tip make it 17 degrees because you're not gonna be chopping with the tip you'll use it for slicing so of course the further out you get the more power you can put into it like when you're chopping right here you're not gonna have much power but if you're chopping that on the end so it all depends on you how you grind it and how you use it so anyway i think i have covered all the different styles that was the lifestyle that i was going to cover one more thing that i want to say about some of this stuff here let me find some of these if you have a handle let's take a peek right here if you have a handle that has a whole lot back here to keep it from slipping out of your hand that's great you may not need a lanyard if you have one that hasn't got much there then you do need a lanyard some machetes this is a columbia river columbia river knife until crkt look how ergonomic shape this handle is molded that would be very hard for that to slip out of your hands if your hands were wet or muddy or you were sweating but the thing is you don't want to have to put a death grip on these things if you're going to be chopping all day uh there's a way of using this lanyard try to put a lanyard on your machetes now whenever you see people that put their hand through this like this they just hang on to it and just hold it like that that lander does very very little unless you're in your canoe or kayak or you're on the edge of a cliff you know hanging off a cliff or a mountain and you know you don't want to drop it or or if you're like you know cutting some berries and then you want to just drop it and continue cutting berries you want to be able to chop for hours without without tiring out your grip so the way you do this is you're gonna in every every machete handle and everybody's hands are different so the way you want to do this is you want the blade turned around backwards and you put it on your thumb and then you just roll the machete up just like that and see how that's on there that way you don't have to have a death grip you can just kind of flop when you're chopping all right you won't flopping while you're chopping because if you're going to put a death grip on it you're going to get tired quick so that's one way of doing it right there another thing you can do is whenever you have it on your thumb like that you can just flip it up like that which is pretty cool put it on your hand backwards just like that flip it up now the other thing that you can do is you can lay it on top like this lay your lanyard on top and then pull the two pieces under and then you can slide your hand in just like this and see that'll that'll lock the machete in too it's not as fast but that'll hold it in right there just like that all right and then the other thing you can do let's see let's see there's the that's over you can go over the blade like this to grip it let's see or you can go under the blade and just put your hand through it like that either way it'll hold but both of those take a little bit of bumbling this is my favorite way right here because you know you just you pull the machete sometimes you can even pull the machete out of your sheath you can just reach up there and grab that and flop it out and you're good to go so i think that's all i was going to cover on the machetes so let's move on to the axes and hatchets and uh camp axes all right axes are basically for us bushcrafters survivalist campers there's basically three axes there's the full size and then the medium size which is either called a boy's axe or camp axe and then there's a hatchet you can get a little bit crazy with it you can call them forest axes or cruiser axes or whatever so but i'm just going this is this is the the beginner's guide to chopping tools so i'm just going to stick with that now most axes come with a protective leather cover and they're called a mask all right that's that's the axe lingo uh axe heads come in all different kind of shapes and sizes and generally there is a double bit and a single bit all right that's considered a single bit this is considered a double bit this is a full size axe it can really take down a tree quick it can buck up a bunch of wood quick but who wants to carry this when you're backpacking or hiking all right so not a whole lot i got two other full size i only own three full-size axes so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go over that a whole lot as far as the boyz axe this actually has a belt loop to it all right so let's pull this out the way this thing does this is a boy's axe or a camp length axe and when you have a double head like this it's good to have a single head for like being on a baiting tent stakes in and stuff but you've only got one cutting edge when you have a double bit like this you can have one between 23 and 25 degrees for chopping and then you can have the other side about 30 degrees for splitting wood you want a little bit different angle for splitting wood so and if you ever see an axe like this where there's a little bitty short lanyard on there one of the old tricks is that whenever whenever you're on a hillside or uneven ground or whenever trees this is what really will throw you off if trees are laying in one way or another and there's trees everywhere and once your way of making sure which way a tree is landing if you're on uneven ground and you can't get your bearings is they'll put a little short one on there and what they'll do is they'll hold that ax up just like this and gravity will allow the axe to be straight and what you'll do is you'll sight in on a tree to see which way a tree is leaning if you're going to fell a tree now generally us bushcrafters campers and survivalists will either chop up what's on the ground and that's usually the best thing to do for like if you're shelter building or especially if you're burning firewood you want dead dry wood you're not going to go after greenwood so anyway um let's see uh oh we got another one here this is a council tools boys axe now like i said all heads just as there's golox parangs bolos pangas heads are different this is considered a hudson bay head all right there's hudson bays there's dayton's there's michigan's there's all different kind of styles there's a whole bunch of different style and a lot of them are named after states why i don't know so uh one thing i want to go over real quick about this here's another small one this is a marble 701 to me that is a perfect perfect backpacker's axe because of the length of the handle so the flatter a blade is the more it is for soft wood the more curved a blade is the more it is for hardwood all right so and then i have a couple of more things i want to go over here i want to talk about hatchets here for a minute hatchets are inherently the most dangerous tool in the woods now why would i say that well i would say that simply because if you have a boy's axe campax or full-size axe in general you have both hands on the axe i mean on the on the wood the only thing you got to worry about is your feet or your legs a lot of people when they're using a hatchet tend to use it with one hand which a lot of times you're going to hold the wood which is stupid and i'm going to go over this later because you're always you're going to have your hand near where you're cutting so if you have two hands on a cutting toe away chopping tool it is much safer tool now this is a hatchet and this is a hudson bay head too now here's the thing that's kind of i find odd that a lot of you will experience this is a council toll hatchet this is a council told boys acts now look at the difference they have the exact same head so honestly it's up to you whether or not you want to carry a hatchet or a boy's axe and like i said this is generally a one-handed tool this is a two-handled tool you could say well i can choke up on this and use it but i'm gonna carry this because i can use it two-handed or i'll can choke up on it like this well when you've got all this hair be be warned if you start doing some stupid stuff like holding this while you choke up on this as you come down you tend to maybe bump yourself which could cause the axe to veer off into a fashion that you don't want it to happen this i think the way this curvy is it's similar to a michigan axe but i'm not sure that's a plum axe right there but that'd be good for a lot of wood processing and driving the intent stakes and stuff uh these handles these handles you don't want any kind of varnish or anything on them you want boiled linseed oil on them to keep from rubbing hot spots on some people treat them with wax this jewel here is from spain this is a basque axe from the basque region of spain and i'm fixing to show you what makes this different from other axes this is nicknamed the moon bit all right this has a lot of curve to it because in the basque region there's a lot of hardwoods this is imported by a company called lamina and there is only one basque ax maker left in the world and i think with the advent i think with it's an art he's an artesian ax maker these are hand forged and it's a guy in spain and there's a company called lamina that imports these uh so these are very special tools and you know with the advent of technology and chainsaws and and modern logging you can't have a bunch of people running around with axes in the logging industry so most of the old artesian axe makers have died off and gone away but there's still one guy left and i cannot pronounce this if you look under lamina you'll find these but it's like i don't know warren harahunahun something i i don't know and the axe head itself says you neta i don't know what that means but anyway these things are great for hardwood this is an absolute joy to chop with we're going to take this out in the woods and chop with it a little bit but the distinction of this is the shape of the head and the way it's mounted all right these are common a regular axe let's see uh a regular axe like this has got a flat part on the back they call that a pole and you can beat on things with it this is rounded in the back you don't want to be beating on it and this is forged and this thing the way it's mounted is different this axe the more you chop with it the tighter the handle gets so here's a spare handle for a boy's axe all right the hole in the ax is called the eye now the way this head is made is it slides on the handle and then you drive a wedge see how it's got a split in it i don't know if you can see that or not because it's painted black but there's a wedge in there maybe one of these others has it yeah there's one this is a round wedge in it but most of the standard axes you'll see in the world are put on this way the handle is tapered it's put on this way and then a wedge is driven in it to lock it in the way the bask axe varies is that the head goes on from this end and slides all the way up just like a tomahawk because see how much larger this is how tapered it is out on the end so that's what a that's that's a bass axe right there the more you use it the more you sling out on it the the more pressure pushes out and it tightens up against it so i think i've covered all the basics on this stuff without getting real crazy there's a lot more on the axe terminology but you know pretty much i kind of i kind of kind of went over the basics of what i think you need to know so with that said let's uh head on out into the woods and chop a little bit have some fun remember after i had cut the camera off that there was a i didn't go over the actual chopping process before we went out into the field so there's some things that you have to know when it comes to the chopping process when you grab something whether it's a machete or an axe and you swing and you chop that's the chopping process but how that blow is utilized is in two different ways there is the shear action and then there is the chip removal action so real quick like without getting too too technical let's see he's down here and take a look so you can see what i'm saying now whether it's an axe or machete certain certain diameters you can come down you can come down with one swoop and cut okay lift this up just a little bit one swoop come down and cut clean through now when you cut clean through something that is the shear action because you are shearing you are shearing the material apart all right now when you get up to certain diameters you're going to get up to certain diameters like this that you're going to need a full-size axe that if you're chopping with a machete like this you're going to have to have a bunch of length so that you can come down and shear that material some hatchets especially this little bitty lightweight marbles here you won't be able to share with that but that's the shearing process now when it comes to the chopping process what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to come up with a a v okay so if you've got a v from the top and then a v from the bottom and then the wood breaks apart that is a v process if you're gonna cut from one side look how big the v is gonna be now here's the thing about this okay if you're going to get down if you're going to cut especially with certain logs now some logs you're going to lay on top of other logs and you'll see that out in the field but whenever you come across a big tree that's been already down and it's dead and dry if you're going to get down on your knees with a hatchet and chop into it you're going to wind up with a super wide v like this now if that log is small enough that you can roll it over your best bet is going to be to chop it this way and then roll the log over and then chop it this way so you're going to have a v you're going to have a double v all right and the idea behind that is is if you do this whether it's a full-size actual little size ax when you get down to the bottom you may wind up cutting into the ground and nicking your blade which you don't want okay but with some logs you know a lot of people have under the misconception that if you've got a big log you're going to cut down here well if you're going to do that because you can't roll the log around you're going to have to do it like this in reality what you're going to do is you're going to turn it if you've got a really big log that you can't roll then you're going to do the double v and the process for that is not necessarily chopping on the top but what you're going to do is stand behind the log and you're going to chop a v this way and then you're going to stand behind a log and you're going to chop a v this way see that way you're not chopping straight down and into the ground and making the v excessively wide so that is the difference between shear action and chip removal and as you're doing the chip removal you want to remove as big as chips as possible so i think that's all i wanted to say now i had everything wrote down but that i didn't write down that was just the thought occurred to me but i mean that's the basic mechanics of chopping okay the two different processes so now let's go out into the field so we finally made it out into the woods well what's left of the woods all right we're going to do some chopping techniques and this is an area that was a halfway clear cut and as you can see they've left a huge mess behind and this is not a good place for a camper but this is an absolute excellent place for uh chopping stuff having fun with axes and machetes so what we're going to do is we're going to go out here and learn some good old chopping techniques because i have plenty of material to choose from first things first safety whenever you're doing this kind of chopping stuff uh grab you some safety glasses protect the old eyes because you don't know where the chips are gonna be flying anywhere and wear boots don't wear flip-flops wear some kind of heavy leather boots now to start with uh there was a technique on another video from a guy that when it comes to chopping with a machete you you may have seen this and and i don't agree with it and i'm not going to say who it is because two different people did it and they said they're supposed to know machetes i mean you can do it this way if you want to but i'm going to show you something that i don't care for oh now when they did it they were concerned with safety which is a good thing and it was some of the safety techniques that they were talking about and so they were talking about laying like this they were talking about laying this back here and chopping like this now that's great because you're not going to swing and hit yourself on the leg but my only problem with that and be forewarned you know if you're in great shape you know do it if you want to but to me the unnatural motion of twisting and swinging like this when you're twisted twisting your spine is terrible that is not a good thing to do so in my guess what you need to do is the trees i mean the forest are they're full of downed logs so what i would suggest you to do is find you a down log to chop with now if you've got something small enough this will be the sheer technique because see it's sheering straight through but now as you see did you just hear that hit the tripod i was just talking about about uh the little pieces flying everywhere when i was chopping them you're not trying to cover your area with little pieces of wood you're trying to cut little pieces of wood for you know probably your twig stove or camp stove or whatever so one of the best ways of collecting these i'm fixing to show you find you a tree just like this where you can aim the wood down and so what you're going to do is then you're going to straddle this this tree here and what you're going to do is you're going to cut them and as you cut them they're going to shoot down to the ground let's remove some of this stuff out of the way at least in theory it's supposed to no so much for that i got one of them to land on the ground but anyway that's the theory and another thing too is that you can aim which way let me find another one of these yeah here's one another thing is you can aim which way by going down or up or in an angle like that now they're all pretty much landing in one place now i'm gonna try to cut them like this okay now they all pretty much landed in a place like that depending you're gonna have to experiment with the angle but what you can do is you can chop up a whole pile of this kind of stuff here in no time to feed your little uh twig stove and these will burn longer than actual twigs so all right now moving on to the next step now let's say that you're gonna move on along to a point like this so with this you're not out here just chopping randomly for absolutely no reason you're wanting to create firewood or do something for a shelter so if you get to a point where right here it gets this big maybe this may be about the limit of what you can share now if i cut it here i don't have as much layer bridge see how i sunk it in about halfway but if i cut it back here there i did that but that took a lot of effort i'll try it one more time i see that i put just the same amount of effort but it only went in halfway now with certain sizes you could chop one size flip it over and chop the other side and it'll get it off so let's do that once more one side get it undone the other side it comes loose now you can see what it does to the wood and two chops you can cut it now sometimes that thing will get stuck the first time so as the wood progressively gets larger then what you can do is you can start taking uh you can take one chip out and that's where instead of cutting straight in i'm going to lean the machete and we'll cut and cut and that takes a v out once you've got the v out you can turn it over and it'll come off see there's part of the v i cut a v here and then here's the other half of the v this is a v and a shear see it's got a v i cut it v here v here flip it over cut through and shear it all right let's see that one more time cut the v out i'm gonna flip it over and shear it see how that looks a v and a shear now let's go to a little bit bigger piece of wood a much larger piece of wood look at that look what i just picked up off the ground when they were out here cutting they cut this knot off this tree and look it's already getting shiny look at that look at that goo in there this is already forming fat wood look at that goo i'm gonna put that in the truck here at home that'd be a good piece of fat wood all right now back to what we were talking about there's a certain point that you're gonna get to a limit of what you can cut with a machete now this the terava scrama is nowhere's near as heavy as the um the parang i was using but it has the handle length for leverage so what i'm going to do and this is a lot bigger there's no way that i can cut a v and a v and shear this so what i'll do in this case is cut halfway through it just like that and then flip it over because the piece of wood is small enough that i can manage it well the end is all crooked that's great let's see if i can do this i'm gonna have to hold it down here there you go i see that that's a relatively big piece of wood right there that you can cut with a machete so let's try that one more time that's the problem with this thing though is [Music] i got a the wood is wanting to be manipulated because it's got a big curve on the end hey look a helicopter coming over here see if this was a this was a survival situation that's what we'd be wanting and i don't normally this is this is actually too big this is this is getting into mache uh axe territory but let's see how efficiently i can do this with the terava ah starting to get hard to manage all right that is how you work yourself today that is the case say i'm exhausted now that's about the width bigger than my hand this is the point of ridiculous to where you really want to go to a hatchet so i'm going to take this same piece of wood and we're going to move on to the hatchet i'm going to show you how much more efficient the hatchet is now the hatchet itself is actually one of the most dangerous tools there is and the reason i say that is because it's generally a one-handed handed tool and the fact that it's so short people have a tendency to hold on to the work which puts their hand in the danger zone so and it's usually best you can kneel down to use a hatchet or if you put your foot far enough away you can just sort of lean over and chop so that's what i'm going to try to do here i'm going to try to i'm going to try to hold let's put this right here all right i think you can see there all right i'm gonna try to hold them one foot now we're gonna see how much more efficient this is all right then the um the axe now if you're gonna do this with your hand make sure that your hand is very very far away for you to do your cutting but i would rather put my foot with a leather boot on it flip it over one more time now that tuck that took a whole lot less effort i'm old as dirt but it still took less effort but it's still a one-handed tool now as far as splitting there's another thing that i'm going to show you splitting is not really a a chopping procedure but i'm going to show you the safe way of doing it now let's talk a little bit about splitting let's say that you've got a piece of wood people are always going to hold a piece of wood and take it like this and try to split it well the thing is since your hands there people tend to not swing with much force and when they just barely swing oftentimes they'll tap it'll bounce off and they'll come straight down if you swing with a lot of force what if you miss then you hit your hands that's not the way to do it the best way to split it is to lay the ax on the log like this and then come down with the whole thing and have this part touching this because it's like this you're going to come down and smash your thumb so you want to do just like this there it goes now once i got the log stuck turn this way and see how i got this my hand right here going with it that's to keep the axe from coming down and smacking my hand and then you'll break it just like that and see and then after that what you'll do is you've got a nice flat spot on the bottom so you're gonna do the same or you can just you can just lay it down like this and split it just like that man that's some gummy wood or do it the same way and hold it like this just like that and then finish it off by hanging all right now let's move on to the boys axe talk a little bit about the the difference between a boy's axe and a full size axe when you're talking about handle length and head weight okay now the thing about this type of axe is it's plenty comfortable enough that if i wanted to stand here i could cut with it okay but the thing is there's plenty enough length this veers off and i'm standing behind the log then it won't hit my legs if i spread my legs out then this is going to be in the way therefore it leads me with the option of either standing here like this or standing back and taking advantage because i have more length but that could put a stress on my back so let's look at the boys axe now with the boys axe i can stand here and i can barely hold the end if i spread my legs and keep them out of the danger zone now you're talking did you just see that did you just see what that just did my leg was back behind the log and so when it swung my leg was out of the way it was close but it was out of the way okay now see how the axe is right there the handle is about to hit here i've cut one side i've cut the other side whenever i start hitting here that is when it's time to start cutting from the top down so now i have it plenty cleared out so instead of chopping all the way through into the ground i'll go back to the shallow side now did you see what i just did with this axe the basque axe has a curve to it it's so short that i don't do the hand motion i was just holding and chopping as you can see it has a nice smooth cut effortless let's talk a little bit about axe technique now when you're using a boy's axe or a camp axe the handle's so short you can just do all your work this way without ever using your hand without moving your hand now proper technique for a full-size axe is sliding your hands now i am a machete man so my axe technique is terrible so i'm going to show you the proper way now it takes a lot of practice but i don't use axe very often so i'm out of practice but what you're supposed to do is hold the axe this way and on this chop the hand slides and then on this chop you swap hands and this slides now that's proper technique i have got into the bad habit of sliding this hand and then switching over and see how my arms are crossing and doing it like that and see that's what happens do you see how i just lost it that's because of the way my arms are crossing if i was doing using proper technique to where i switched the held hand with the movable hand that wouldn't happen as much so with that said with that said everybody knows me as a machete man so that's why my axe technique is so sloppy but i did just show you the proper way now one other thing i want to show you is lambing a tree once you've failed the tree and for me i see no reason to fell a tree unless you own the property and you're going to cut down some green logs for a cabin for permanent shelter if you're just after firewood there's always wood laying around everywhere so i'm gonna try to find something to show you lambing for once the trees failed this is a pretty good example of a downed tree whether it was failed or whether you found it in the woods i've had a lima tree and that's that's how to remove all these limbs now never ever ever take an axe and cut this water because if you cut this way you're going to wedge the axe the only way that's ever permissible is if you can cut the limb off in one swipe which would be the steer action now there's a little bitty one right there you can cut that one off with that something like this you may or may not can cut it off in one sweep so you're going to want to do take chips out of it and you also always want to stand on the opposite side of the tree all right so the technique would be cut in that way and that way and so what i did is i took a chip out of it i'm gonna bring it in closer so that we can do this one this would be the improper technique is standing on the same side because i'm i can bounce off and hit my leg or i can go through and hit here you want to be on the opposite side of the tree and preferably instead of standing back here you want to stand a little bit forward like maybe even even where the branch is okay so this is a proper side to be on improper technique is cutting from this side because you're never going to remove any material and you're not going to shear something of that size so what you want to do is make the initial shear take a chip out see how i just removed it make another shear cut and then take a chip out and that's how you remove a branch and then you can just clean it up if you want to so just like that same process with a hatchet but you'll be leaning over a lot more just like that alrighty i hope you had fun i hope you learned something be safe with your chopping watch your fingers uh yeah saws are more efficient but there are nowheres near as much fun so i hope this is a pretty good insight into how i feel about shopping tools and what i think they can do for you so till the next one hope you learned something hope you had fun get out enjoy life hopefully you can find a wasteland like this you can chop to your heart's content and we shall see you in the next one thank a beauty you

Channel: ReallyBigMonkey1

Views: 187,483

Keywords: Chopping, Tools, Survival, Survivalist, Survival training, Bushcraft, Bushcrafting, Bushcraft skills, Camping, Campers, Skills, Education, School, Classes, Hatchet, Axe, Machete, Golok, Parang, Kukri, Panga, Coping, Bolo, Bush, Double bit, Haft, Basque, Hudson bay, Dayton, Michigan, Georgia, Sheath, Vee, Shear, Method

Id: _WKDmvqut4A

Length: 68min 58sec (4138 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021