In my dry neck of the woods , a saw is of more value than an ax. Due to the dry and hot climate, most wood types are as hard as iron . This help tremendously in campfire and cooking, as it make wonderful very hot coals that you can use for a long time! Trying to cut or batton this dry hard wood will ruin any knife in a very short time! As such, chopping this very hard wood take a real effort. It's very different from the northern hemisphere with more wet and cold [moist] areas where you guys prefer an ax. Horses for courses and all that, hey .....?
I do have both in my BOB, although I do not have a full size axe; much shorter, smaller version we would call a hatchet. The folding saw is much easier to carry and lighter. The hatchet can also be used as a hammer, or for self defense. I guess I don't mind the extra weight to have the versatility.
I have to disagree here sekelbos, I have been running the woods in the Northern hemisphere & the Southern hemisphere for over 65 years, & I have never had to use an axe or a saw for camp fire wood. No offence intended, but in my experience people who use an axe or a saw for collecting camp fire wood do so for two reasons; either they just like carrying & using one or the other, or they simply lack experience. I carry a tomahawk for shelter construction, making stakes & traps, throwing for entertainment & practice for hunting in case the need arises, & for self defence. I live in a forest in Australia, have done so for over 40 years, the forest is my life. The more skills you have, the less you are dependent on equipment. There is a definite need for an axe in long term wilderness living, but I see no point in carrying a saw. There are more important things that you NEED to carry & you do not need the extra weight how ever little that may be. When on the trail, there must be a compromise between maximum self-reliance & minimum weight. There is a big difference between wild camping for short periods of time & long term wilderness living/survival. Keith.
I am going to vote for the saw. I do agree with Morgan101 that it would be nice to have both and that they serve different roles, I like the light weight option. My wild growing wood would be hard as a rock or the domestic wood, I would want to cut and fit into or for something, Chopping wood does generate more noise than using a saw. Always trade off's.
I don't generally use a saw. The reason is hardiness. It is really tough break an axe but a saw is more vulnerable in a survival situation that an axe.
when i go winter camping ,i bring a snow sled with a 30'' bow saw. i find that i can cut up free standing dried wood like spruce and cut it up into 4 foot pieces . you need a dozens of these pieces to be able to build a fire that will keep you warm. that little saw that was shown just would not do the job.
It is easy to sharpen an axe/hatchet/tomahawk. A saw is more delicate, prone to wearing down and some are impossible to sharpen. Some specialty saws can be sharpened, but eventually, all saws will be nearly useless for the job. (But they are great if you can replace them!) I prefer the more durable axe/hatchet for these reasons and also because I love, love, LOVE throwing my hawk. After my experience with flinging them all these years, I can guarantee nothing would be safe within hawk throwing distance. I graduated from throwing dishes to hawks, lol. (To my credit, I went all Cajun and threw dishes only ONCE in my life, but boy! It was spectacularly fun. Never again though. Too much mess to clean up.) .
There are good arguments for both, as we can see from the previous posts. I can only add that here in the UK I have carried both axe and saw, but only ever used the saw. It is good practice carry a spare saw blade, and many folding saws have a replaceable blade to allow changing to a spare.
I have axes and saws of various shapes and sizes but nine times out of ten use a saw. A cheap bow saw will cut your wood faster than an expensive axe. My favorite small folder is a Laplander saw.
If I have to choose one or the other, I would choose a axe. The axe is more versatile over the long haul in my opinion.
Good morning all, It's already been said here but "built in redundancy" is better than not understanding the importance of one's governing prepper philosophy. Sheltering in place is like Swiss Family Robinson. The place is a large tool box and work shop with familiar surroundings. An evacuation gives one "refugee status" ... the unknown gets to the top of the list of worries. I must plan for both sheltering in pace and evacuations ... and the evac might be by land or might be by water. Thus, multi-functional tools govern my situation and philosophy. I rely on the Fire Service industrial suppliers for most versatile tools. There are combination ax / hatchet one where there's a telescoping handle making the thing longer or shorter adjusting to the need. One model had a removable external portion of the telescoping handle to refit for a crowbar type of function. My literature is old / dated. One company that had - don't know current status of coo - good products for prepper on the march was TNT Tools, Inc of Littleton, Colorado. (tnttool.com) One example: Their TNT Tool, a/k/a "the Denver tool", is a sledge hammer, ram, axe, pike hook, pry bar, Don't know if it can open cans. Many companies are around supporting the Fire Service. Many axes do not need a whet stone, file and a plastic container of Singer Sewing Machine light oil. Just have lots of $$$ because the stuff is expensive. Still, the products work and the successful evac is less costly than rest of life disability.
I've taken down many trees with a handsaw, really prefer it to using a axe to drop a tree but the axe is still more versatile in my opinion. I have never been much for limiting my self with the one or the other choices. A bow saw blade does not weigh much. I suppose it all adds up but bugging out is not high on my list. The saw that I prefer is a 4.5 foot one man saw.
I've never had to chop down a tree and for pruning or removing branches I find a saw is much easier, I use a general purpose adjustable saw, in a shtf moving about scenario I would carry a folding saw and a light hatchet, a machette is a useful tool for cutting back thin branches and scrub.( I was a self employed gardener in a previous life).
nope, chainsaws are just quicker at it. besides they've got huge machines that fell, remove the bark and chop them into sections all in one go and its even quicker than a chainsaw.
Part of my childhood was spent in logging country. The saginaw valley shipped out billions of board feet of lumber back in the day, before my time. It was that timbering that caused the great fires in Michigan. Imagine all those dead pine boughs, when that lit up it went fast. My great uncle and aunt lived near Metz back in 1906. The Metz fire was one of Michigan's worst. My aunt left to the south, uncle drove a buckboard down a few months later. Anyhoo after all this jabbering, the preferred tool back in that time was a crosscut saw for dropping and a axe for limbing. But a axe was used for notching after the saw cut, need a notch for directing the fall. The are still logs in the rivers from those days. Many of them have a log mark (brand) stamped into the end indicating which company owned the log. The chainsaw was the game changer and now the processor.
For wilderness survival purposes I would probably prefer some sort of ax over a saw. I am not talking about chainsaws or one and two-man crosscut saws. I'm talking about the saws that are small enough to easily fit on or in my backpack. A saw does work better for small things but it doesn't split wood well at all and is useless on the big stuff. It is also useless as a weapon. I would probably go with a smaller ax or a hatchet. For lighter carry, I like my hawks but it isn't as versatile as a good hatchet. Another contender for me is my Kabar made Kukri. It is a great chopper for smaller trees and splits well with a baton and works as a drawknife and slicer. What I've actually done to address this situation is simple. I carry a saw blade and the hardware to make a bucksaw. Once I settle down I will make it. I also have several different folding saws. One of my favorites folds down to a flat 18" stick shape but opens to make a triangular pruning type saw. It has three blades for cutting wood, metal and pruning work.
I assume we are referring to the use of an axe or a saw at home, not for "bugging out". I am quite sure now that most people on this forum are not planning to bug out from their present homes even if it was safer to do so. My pack weighs about as much as I am prepared to carry for any great distance, I have chosen my equipment for its sustainability & multi-purpose. I DO NOT carry a saw, I carry a tomahawk. I could throw a saw fairly accurately, but I think as a self defence weapon it is not as good as a tomahawk. I can't hammer trap stakes & shelter stakes in with a saw. I can't shape stakes & trap parts with a saw. In fact, I have no use for a saw at all. If anyone is planning on carrying a saw & an axe, then I would assume that they can carry more weight than I can, a great deal more weight considering the number of priority items there are above the carrying of a saw. I am not having a go at anyone here, I am trying to encourage you to think about your gear & supplies seriously, & seriously think about "what if". What if I had to choose between staying & almost certain death, or leave my home, & am I really prepared for what I will need to do in order to survive. Keith.
Good afternoon Keith, Your last sentence explains your first sentence. I'd like to add the principle here to "Prepare for realistic worst case scenarios" . Plus, even if it appears OK to shelter in place, there could be mandatory evacuation orders. Who the Hades knows about, for example, public health issues ?! Thus, I have a staging area for gear and go through the headache of assembling my load-out on a case by case basic adding this headache to the seasonal and weather demands. My heavy-duty 12 inch survival machete is always on my belt. Fire Service axes get added later.
https://www.thefirestore.com/store/category.aspx/categoryId/958/Wildland-Tools/#/orderby/9/offset/0 Just to provoke thought........ I'm not endorsing company; just presenting a couple of items appropriate for GOOD evacs.
Depends on location, but usually I carry both. Though I must admit that I like the axe more, but it doesn't add a lot of weight to carry a saw as well. Also an axe is easier to use in the winter because it doesn't bind in frozen wood the way a saw would. Actually, it's more versatile in general. And even though I use the axe 90% of the time, I like a saw when I want to make clean, straight cuts.
I am assuming from the various comments above most are thinking along the lines of small chunks of wood that one might use for a camping trip . Small diameter wood is what a person needs to fit into a wood cook stove / oven but not what is needed to heat a house . Small diameter wood simply will burn up too fast to allow a person to get any sleep on a cold night . My experience is that a two man crosscut saw is the better choice for cutting up trees . That is why I have several two man crosscut saws in my stash . The axe is better at cutting up smaller stuff . The one man saw is somewhere in between . A problem I have experienced with one man saws " the regular fasten on saw blade variety " " bow saw " is the blades are hard to keep in place and not that hard to bend . I have never been able to straighten one out once bent .Randyt was exactly correct in his above post about the old time loggers .
I have a few two men and one man crosscut saws. Our father taught my brother and I how to maintain and sharpen a crosscut. I have a plethora of saw tools, here are some that had belonged to my great granddad.
