I kicked the crap out of my SOD yesterday. I have to admit, it was a kicking the dog sort of reaction to an extremely frustrating and disappointing day. Anyhow, I had this old knarly piece of stump that just laughs at my fisker's axe. No kidding - it litterly chuckles when I bonked it and it bounced the axe right back at me. I decided that stump was going to eat it - and the SOD was going to be the one to show it some humility.

Thats the nasty piece right on the top there.



Every good athlete needs a little stretch and warm-up before the work-out so....



Here we go - the attack. Okay this stump is just tricky. Bloody limbs and knots everywhere. Didn't want to split no matter how far I sunk that 1/4" chunk of steel into it.





I was literally banging away like a madman. Managed to get a blister in my batoning hand. Then I actually thought I bent the blade <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sad.gif" alt="" /> I was wacking away and the knife suddenly turned. What happened was the wood actually deformed around the blade. I kept hitting that thing and finally it went through. Now I baton wood a lot. I won't usually tackle something like this. I thought I went too far. The SOD took it, it took it all and didn't even blink.







After all this, the edge was still nice and grabby. No edge rolling and no chips. Didn't shave hair as effortlessly as it did before my little exercise, but 10 strokes on the sharpmaker readily fix it up. It really is a bombproof!