Gränsfors-Bruks Mini Hatchet Review

The SOG Hand Axe comes in at 18.6 ounces and a street price around $35. Holds a decent edge but unfortunately has one of the least comfortable handles I've ever used. Wouldn't recommend it.

There are lots of other choices in the pound-and-a-half range (Fiskars 7870 is sweet) but then you're getting pretty far afield from the ultralight world.

Not as cool but a good, still lightweight axe at a fraction of the cost

Great to see a little bit of bushcraft on BPL.

I have the GB wildlife hatchet and it's always along on canoe trips and car camping trips with me. The goal this summer is to carve myself a spruce paddle using just the hatchet, my mora knife and a bit of sandpaper.

That being said, despite my love of using hatchets and axes, I find them the least valuable of the bushcraft tools in the field. A small saw and a fixed blade knife cover all the necessary bases and the hatchet is generally relegated to playing around with for fun. Good fun though. And if I was in a situation where I needed a strong, sturdy shelter (cold january night in the boreal forest) I'd definitely appreciate having the hatchet along.

Cheers,
Travis

I can think of a few situations beyond bushcraft where a hatchet or saw would be handy. For starters at established campsites people tend to drag in wood that is too big to burn. If you can cut it up you can make use of it and clean up the campsite to keep the LNT purists happy.

I think it was kephart who carried a small pocket hatchet. He claimed it was all he needed for a split wood fire and cut saplings to throw up a natural shelter.

If you build enough campfires in wet weather you really start to appreciate a light cutting/splitting tool. I am more of a saw/knife guy though.

Thank you, Walter for quoting the hatchet bit Justin mentioned out of "Camping and Woodcraft". I learned more about camping and woods life from reading that ONE SINGLE BOOK which was written in the first decade of the 20th century than I did in the last TEN YEARS of reading backpacking forums.

I like the pack.

"The Gransfor Mini has to have the worst performance-to-cost ratio of any hatchet on the market! That aside, its weight is poorly distributed, the handle is too heavy. There's simply not enough mass there for it to be a useful tool to split wood…."

These small hatchets were traditionally used more for butchering large game or in a kitchen for splitting wood stove fuel. IMHO, ALL small hatchets lack the heft to do any real chopping and are rather dangerous in experienced hands, with a tendency to bounce off the target and back into the operator's arm or leg.

All in all, I cut cut far more wood in less time and effort with a small saw at 10% the cost and 25% the weight with greater safety. My cheap Gerber saw will go through a 6" log quickly and little chance of hurting myself.

As far as splitting goes, you can baton small stuff with a knife, although banging on a blade is anathema to me. It is easy to cut a branch halfway though with a saw and then split it by bending it to expose the dryer insides. As others pointed out, small stuff can be broken off by hand or by heel. In a pinch, bigger stuff can be slowly fed into the center of an established fire without cutting or splitting any smaller than what you can comfortably carry.

Carving and shaving wood is best done with a sharp knife. A hatchet is handy for making points or notching, but not much else for wood-craft. When you get into real timber making, there are broad axes and adzes that come into play, but they have no place on the trail.

So what it comes down to for me is that a hatchet is certainly better than nothing at all, but not really the first tool I would reach for. They have a nostalgic appeal, but we're supposed to be over nostalgia and fashion when putting together our UL kits.

Any thoughts on Wetterlings "Buddy" or Wilderness hatachets for cutting wood for cooking fire? Mike

3 things are listed as to the benefits of a hatchet.

Keeping your hands clean and free from splinters? A pair of cut-resistant Hy-Flex gloves are only an ounce, work great on rough wood and the rubberized grips make handling slimy branches much easier too. They also make nice pot grabbers (although they melt on hot windscreens, don't ask me how I know ;) ).

Getting to dry heartwood? If you're doing that, then it's most likely for kindling and is something to which a knife is more adept. By the time a fire is big enough to burn big enough split wood to need a hatchet, it should burn wet branches anyway.

It's fun to use? That's debatable. Seems like a big calorie burn to me. A saw seems much easier.

I also noticed that nothing pictured in that article couldn't be accomplished with a small saw. Even a 1.2 oz Sierra Pocket Saw could cut anything shown there. Feeding a BushBuddy with a hatchet? For real? Again, cutting one inch "logs" into wood pellets is a lot easier than stuffing twigs in it every five minutes, but when the tool weighs more than the stove, something's out of balance.

or maybe even a good micro-brew :)

like others have posted, a fixed blade knife and folding/sliding saw will be much more useful than a hatchet/axe for shelter construction, small fires, cleaning fish, fowl and game, etc

I own a small Wetterlings axe and it's handy when I go cabin hopping in the winter, but outside of splitting large amounts of wood- a fixed blade knife and saw will do more for less weight

I got a beautiful Gränsfors Bruk Liten Skogsyxa (little wood axe) for my birthday a couple of years back. I live a few hours drive from them nowadays as it happens.

Gorgeous bit of kit but sharper than you might be used to.

I was practicing left handed wood splitting (I'm pretty good with my right). I was simply resting the axe on the end of the log as I assessed where there might be a crack already opening up in the drying wood. The head of the axe just slipped off, and fell, without force, about two inches onto the tensioned tendon at the back of my right thumb – neatly severing it.

Little blood, almost no pain. Very clean wound. Some pain as the tendon disappeared up towards my wrist though.

I'm no superhero but I've had my fair share of toe-curling injuries over the years from sports and martial arts and I can cope pretty well. However, I had to lie down and nearly passed out. The knowledge of how seriously I'd just managed to injure myself was one of the most unpleasant things I've experienced. To clarify, having no useful thumb is counted as a very serious disability in terms of the scale of the help available in most developed countries.

Of course, a drive to a very well equipped Swedish hospital and some fun-to-watch surgery as the surgeon lengthened the wound considerably to retrieve the severed tendon, and all was well again (after six weeks in a painful cast with my thumb held hard backwards).

Two years on and with a fair bit of physio I have most of the extension range in the thumb and the grip strength is about what it was.

So – gorgeous tool but be very aware that they are razor sharp and require no force to slice though flesh!

Be careful with such things in the back-country. ;)