REVIEW: Fiskars handsaw (small)

Splitting firewood can be very strenuous if you don't have the right tools. Especially when traveling light, you might be tempted to leave out an axe or a proper saw, and then you find yourself in a predicament. Fiskars offers various tools in different sizes that are perfect for on-the-go. Martin has tested the Fiskars hand saw (small with coarse teeth) for you in practice.

Fiskars offers a whole range of hand saws: they come in small and large variations, with fine and coarse teeth. In all models, the saw blade can be pushed into the handle for transport and locked with a slider. The saws are black with a clearly visible orange slider.

The "Small" weighs 92 grams, little weight for a lot of tool. When collapsed, it is only 19.6 cm long, with a good working length of the saw blade (usable teeth) of 15.4 cm. In comparison, the large hand saw is just over twice as heavy (20 cm) with a usable length of 24.5 cm. So, you get 10 cm of sawing length.

In practical use, the saw fits excellently in the hand, the slider holds well, and the saw blade is sufficiently thick. You can saw through medium-sized branches without much effort and make usable firewood pieces. The effort required compared to chopping with an axe is felt to be lesser.

CONCLUSION: Anything thicker than a hand's width naturally requires more effort and is better divided with an axe, but no axe worth its salt weighs 92 grams. One always has to make compromises when preferring one characteristic (weight) over another (performance/utility). The Fiskars saw is so light and works so well that you can confidently leave the axe at home.

If you are interested in folding/sliding saws in general, you can also take a look at the Bushcraftportal, where a few common models are presented and compared.

The model presented here has been revised in the meantime, but you can still find it if you do a little Google search. The successor is called Fiskars 123870 Xtract and weighs slightly more at 130g. The Xtract is priced at €15.99 on Amazon, for example.