How to Split Firewood with a Hatchet - REUPLOAD (Sound Boosted)

welcome or welcome back everybody this is Ben Gordon from Ben Gordon Outdoors if you're joining us for the first time um I am a retired camp counselor I was a camp counselor for about 10 years and nowadays I work as a structural engineer but I'm still interested in the outdoors and sharing my experience today we're here to talk about splitting wood with a hatchet get out of here Hatchet versus splitting maul splitting moles basically a big old Sledgehammer with an edge on it splitting maul is the tool of choice when you're at an established base camp and weight and size isn't a problem but if you're out hiking if you're backpacking then a hatchet is definitely a little more packable than a splitting ball doesn't come with as much power as a splitting mall so we'll have to choose our wood a little more carefully you can see here this one is longer and naughtier this is going to be a lot more difficult to split this one has less knots going on there's still a couple little knots that are going to be in here but ultimately it's rather straight grain you're also going to need to to choose logs that are smaller in diameter and shorter because then you've got less area to peel apart so a hatchet can be used to split down decent sized logs I wouldn't try and take on this one uh this guy could probably pop that straight apart so just like with splitting maul the easiest way to do this once you find logs that will stand up on each other two hand grip overhead down you want to aim down at the base of the log not up here at the top because as you approach the top of this log you're going to naturally slow down so you really want to be making sure to aim for the bottom this part's just in the way we need to get it stood up to get it stood up there we go it can be tricky to get them stood up and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute so pops it right apart if we had not gone all the way through and I'm going to simulate that here this is a little bit more dangerous I'm holding way off to the side here so that as my ax goes down it's going to split down with the grain if you feel it all uncomfortable about doing this don't can be a little dangerous I'm going to lift these together smack them down I didn't stick I'm gonna do it again and I'm Letting Go with my hand to get free and clear we're almost there now it's stuck I'm gonna drive that on there a little bit more now we're getting into what I call the upright bash we've got the log coming up with the hatchet and we're going to bring them down together and this is pretty common if you're splitting larger wood you're going to get stuck part way through your options here are you can baton just like with a knife although a lot of people say don't the Tana knife a hatchet can take it it's made for that sort of impact so you can just take and drive your hat to head through always make sure that when you're swinging your Hatchet you're not aiming into yourself I'm aiming at a Twist that might be hard to see on camera right now but I'm aiming so that if I miss I'm going to go this way and not stick into my cell you always want to be conscious of where the ax is going to go once it does its job if I start splitting like this with my hand wrapped around as soon as I split the ax is going straight into my hand so you need to be very conscious Piper get out of here good girl all right the other the opposite of the upright bash here so you've got a log that weighs more than your Hatchet head you actually get more inertia flipping it around and going this way this is going to be kind of silly with how light this piece is here but we instead go for this bigger one I'm not sure if this is going to work or not this is a pretty ugly piece I can't get it we'll try this one instead I'm just gonna baton that right in there to get started important note on batoning never ever ever hit hardened steel on hardened steel tools are made steel that gets hard and when steel that gets hard breaks it does so pretty explosively the chips can go flying into your eye and other things like that so now that we're in there I'm going to turn this around because this log actually weighs more than the head of the hatchet so it's going to have more inertia and it's driving up into the log and if I take that back around you'll note that I'm working pretty hard here to split these logs normally you'd want a bigger stump up higher you want it higher up than when you've got a long handle because you don't have that reach to swing down with but since we're trying to be safe and use this small stump we're staying down low here the other option if you don't have a good big stump is what I call the parallel split because you're putting the stick you're trying to split and your handle parallel to each other lining them up and as you strike these together the head of the ax wants to go in following the Grain and split but this also wants to pinch your hands so you need to be aware and kind of pull apart as you strike I got a rotten log this only works on thinner pieces there we go so we're buried in there and if we take and we wrench sideways it peels open sometimes you'll get kind of stuck in there where it won't run all the way down see how it's not splitting all the way down you can take it swap it end for end and twist pops right apart so the hatchet definitely is up to the task of making big pieces of wood into smaller pieces of wood as long as you know your limits and you're safe about it thanks very much hope you enjoyed uh like subscribe drop comments below for any further ideas you might have for videos thank you very much

Channel: Ben Gordon Outdoors

Views: 15,800

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Id: SekMNMt4CeQ

Length: 7min 44sec (464 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022