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I read recently in a book on custom knifemaking written back in the 1970's that William Scagel (dubbed in the book as the father of modern knifemaking) felt it was better to make a knife that did one thing well, as opposed to making a knife that did many things poorly.
I've watched a lot of YouTube knife evaluation videos. There seems to be a mindset that knives today are supposed to be able to do everything. If you can't walk out into the woods and build a cabin with only your knife, then there's something wrong with said knife.
Many knives are judged on the basis of whether or not you can chop and split wood with it, hence the word "batoning" has entered the knife culture's lexicon. When I was in the Boy Scouts, my Scoutmasters would have kicked my butt six ways from Sunday had I used a knife for that for which I should have used an ax. For the record, I had great Scoutmasters, real guys a kid could look up to. They taught me a lot that I still rely on today. But they wouldn't in a millennium ever substitute a knife for an ax, if both were available. And if you were heading out in the woods, then you should have both.
It's funny how things have changed. What think y'all?
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