Hrmmm....
I think Thomas is making a great point about the British Bushcraft market pushing for things too far but I also suspect his point is a bit over stated.
A buddy of mine just showed me a Swedish Puuko he got with a date stamp in the 1903 range. The basic blade geometry was a high Scandi/Saber grind. Early Buck fixed blades used saber grinds, my grandfaters 50s vintage no-name Bowie hunter has a saber grind, my Schrade-Walden H-15 has a saber grind.... Point is, the saber grind has been used on a lot of different knives and was common long before British Bushcrafters started clamoring for them. In this regard, I think Thomas's otherwise great point may be a bit overstated or wrongly interpreted.
The knife also had a clear secondary bevel, very obviously naturally convexed from years of free hand sharpening. On Thomas's other point, that the fascination with the "zero" grind is not traditional, I totally agree with that.
"Bushcraft" has long ago moved to the point of being ripe for parody. But given their focus on wood working it's also not surprising they would gravitate towards grinds that do better for wood working.
As a rule, I find that convexed scandi/saber (or convex) grinds offer me the most control and best shaving capability when working with wood.
+ I find it easily to control the angle of the cut by rolling the blade on the rounded shoulder of the saber/scandi grind.
+ I find a convexed apex curls wood better.
+ I find the rounded shoulder hangs up less than the shoulder of hollow grinds on deep cuts in wood.
+ I find that hollow grinds tend to bind when splitting wood (same is true with hollow ground hatchets like the Estwing).
+ I find that saber/scandi or convex ground blades allow for a more laterally stable secondary grind which I find important when working with wood.
Just as the British bushcrafters blindly seek the zero grind Scandi while operating in something of an internet echo chamber, I think the same thing is true when watching "traditional" N. American hunting knife makers respond to the bushcraft/survival knife markets. As noted above, it was common above for early 1900s NA hunting knives to be flat or saber ground. Consider these Marbles.
http://masterwoodsman.com/2013/classic-camping-knives/
I *think* the hollow grind started to become more widely used as the manufacturing automation of WWII made it more cost effective and then more common. The hollow grind has real benefits for cleaning game, so the shift to hollow grinds in American hunting knives made good sense.
But this fact doesn't make the hollow grind the best wood working knife grind.
My experience with custom made objects in other domains is that custom makers tend to stay close to their roots. The same can be true for manufacturers. For example, with Ron Hood's passing, Buck started putting hollow grinds on their "survival" knives and only recently reversed this on one of the Ron Hood co-branded knives.
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