...because if you are in a life/death situation you may well not have all the tools you might wish for, so knowing how to get the most from any tool you might have, without wrecking it, is a handy skill to have cultivated in gentler times. So we learn to fell saplings with knives and use a baton to expand the capability of our knives. We learn to choke up on our axes for fine work, and how to sharpen them to do more than just split logs and even though safety and efficiency are important, and saws are much better for sectioning logs, we learn to do that too with chopping tools.
Im all for being able to improvise and use things/tools in different ways
i use my leatehrman for all sorts of things every day.
but as they say right tool for the job.
so just in a theoretical ranger concept, assuming bow as primary weapon ( much like musket for Roberts rangers ) would a tomahawk and knife combo be better than just a knife, so you would be saving your knife edge for different tasks, but by all means you could use just knife for wood purposes, just wondering.
From the original video Shad was saying that a Falchion/messer ( very long machete equivalent) would be the sensivle weapon to carry, but I wonder when so many early colonists used tomahawk and knife.
I saw something this week that the tomahawk was used in vietnam and so many US troops had used tomahawwks when they were young and on farms so it was familiar to them, and they were used to open ammo crates and for jungle use.
In jungle places liek panama you have machetes being pretty much every day carry for even teenagers and kids as its so usefull.
I do get triggeerd by people making blanket statements like "they would/wouldnt have used..." just because they dont in their small area.
I used to get annoyed with reenactors saying saxons wouldnt have travelled , and wouldnt have used backpacks, because the person in question cant conceieve of wanting to camp himself. Or that saxons didnt have belt pouches as they didnt carry things like keys and wallets.
Just wondering the reason if machete is so usefull, why isnt it used more in Northern arboreal?