Gear Review, the Gerber Camp Axe

by | Aug 24, 2011 | Gear | 2 comments

Back from anoth­er trip to the camp site, I had occa­sion to put a cou­ple pieces of gear to use this week­end.  One of which i use reg­u­lar­ly and the oth­er that I recent­ly acquired that I’ve been look­ing for­ward to using.

Gerber Camp Axe

First, I car­ry my Ger­ber Camp Axe in my truck all the time, just in case I want to hit the road camp­ing, it dou­bles as gear for the Get Home Bag, and if I have to Bug Out, I always know where to find it, and if I Bug Out in the truck, I don’t have to wor­ry about for­get­ting it.  Sec­ond, I sim­ply love this axe for camp­ing.  A few of the spec­i­fi­ca­tions:

  • It weighs just about 2 1/2 pounds
  • The han­dle is 18″ long and made of a strong poly­mer mate­r­i­al
  • The head is car­bon steel and come out of the box pret­ty sharp.
When I picked up this camp axe about 18 months ago, I debat­ed between it and a hatch­et.  I opt­ed for the Ger­ber Camp Axe, and I am glad I did.  The 18 inch han­dle allows me to get a pret­ty good full swing to cut down fire wood that we have pre­vi­ous­ly cut up with the chain­saw.  The head is heavy enough to go through the logs in one good swing most times.  The 18″ length, to me, is the per­fect halfway point between a hatch­et and a full length axe.  The han­dle which is a fiber­glass poly­mer mix has lit­tle to no vibra­tion and feels like it is inde­struc­tible.  I have used the back side of the head as a ham­mer and to ham­mer in my tent stakes.  It has tak­en care of most of the small to medi­um camp jobs I have need­ed it for.  I would not hes­i­tate to use it to take 3″ ‑4″ logs/trees if I had to in order to build a shel­ter.  The only thing I can say that might be an improve­ment is to tex­ture the han­dle.  While it has not slipped out of my hand I can see that if you start sweat­ing while chop­ping or the han­dle gets wet, I can see it slip­ping out of my hand, poten­tial­ly. Maybe not, how­ev­er.

Oh, and it also comes with a great Bal­lis­tic Nylon sheath that is very well built. I lost it once, called Ger­ber to buy a new one, and they sent it to me com­plete­ly free. I thought that was awe­some cus­tomer ser­vice!

In all, I real­ly like this camp axe.  I can cer­tain­ly see strap­ping to my back­pack to go do some seri­ous hik­ing, camp­ing, or Bug­ging Out.

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2 Comments

  1. millenniumfly
    millenniumfly on August 24, 2011 at 5:43 pm

    While axes are nice I’m a much big­ger fan of handy back­pack­ing saws for such pur­pos­es. Either way, nice review.

    Reply
    • suburban
      suburban on August 24, 2011 at 6:47 pm

      @millenniumfly — I like my Ger­ber saw as well. They serve dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es in my opin­ion. My camp axe gets used to cut down logs that are 6″ — 12″ in diam­e­ter, and my camp saw, gets used for the saplings, etc. I should also clar­i­fy, the logs have already been chain­sawed down into fire­wood…

      Reply

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