Blues :
I have found puukkos not only great for woodwork and other slicing/cutting tasks but easy to sharpen as well.
Compared to which knives specifially? Which makers would you limit to not being able to make a knife that out cuts a puukko, is more durable, and easier to sharpen. You have used blades from Ray Kirk. I used his JS bowie. It cut better than any Puukko I have used as the edge angle was more acute, as was the primary grind (by a factor of about two).
Yes if you take a puukko and compare it to a heavy "tactical" knife like a TOPS Anaconada, or Strider WB, or something similar, you fill find that the puukko handles cutting with generally less force. This however is *not* because it has a single bevel grind. It is because the edge angle is more acute, about half - plus the blade stock is thinner.
If you compare a puukko to a knife actually also intended for similar tasks, very light work, and that knife has an optimal primary grind, knives by makers like David Boye, Phil Wilson, and the like, you will find they easily out cut the puukkos and sharpen *much* faster. The edges are also far more durable.
You don't have to go custom, lots of knives can be found with very thin stock, high primary grinds and acute edge geometry. Depending on how far Swamp Rat takes the new D2 line, they should easily stand with a puukko in terms of cutting ability and could surpass it on most thick cutting on binding materials.
Consider that if it was just as easy to sharpen a bevel that is one inch wide as it is 1/16" wide you can just as easily plane down steel stock (or anything else) regardless of length or width as surface area doesn't matter. Bring this technology to the machining industry and you would be a make a billion overnight.
Consider the massive difference in amount of steel that needs to be removed in both cases, one is literally up to a hundred times greater than the other. Can you sharpen a puukko relatively fast - sure however that is a really vague statement and thus meaningless as you have not defined fast nor how blunt was the knife nor how it was sharpened. Make some specific defined relative comparisons.
Will the puukko sharpening always be vastly longer than a knife with a secondary edge bevel - yes. The edge on the secondary edge beveled knife can also have a more obtuse angle and still cut better because the edge is thinner due to the primary grind and thus will be more durable under the same stress and thus will sharpen even faster than the difference in relative surface area would predict.
The only advantage the puukko has for sharpening is you can lay the bevel flat again the stone and thus the angle variance is low. This isn't negated if a hollow relief is used, nor a primary grind. Boye had the same feature on his knives and they had a primary grind. You can just shape the guard or choil area as an angle rest.
You can also just put a wedge under the spine during honing. Or rest the blade against your thumb. You can also angle the hone and use the knife sharpmaker style as your ability to just a perpendicular line is *massively* greater than to judge some arbitrary angle.
Yes if the knife is just barely blunted and can be restored to sharpeness with a few passes on a strop, a puukko will sharpen easily - as any knife will in such situations. However use two knives for heavy cutting on abrasive or difficult to cut materials until the edges are so blunted you can actually see the rolling and wear and now sharpen them.
The grip is also outstanding for cutting from many different angles and handholds.
And having a guard prevents this? Altering the shape to aid in ergonomics, or texture prevents this? And again - not all puukkos have this shape as they realize that it has it limitations and thus make them with guards and contouring on the grips.
... the Scandinavians know a little something about knives and that working with them under a variety of both mild and harsh conditions for centuries has refined the design ...
Why stop with the puukko, why not go back to the hand stone axe, that was used for *way* longer than a puukko. It was also used by people living in a *much* more demanding enviroment who depending on their tools every single day in constant threat of death by the elements of predation. By your logic this means it is a superior design, vastly superior in fact.
[my comments]
... ludicrous in the face of the millions whose experience would vastly differ with your take.
Axes were long used to fell trees, I would assume many primitive culture still use them as the main wood cutting tool - this should however not make you ignore the use of a saw. As soon as saws were introduced they replaced the axe almost overnight for felling (the axe was delegated to just waste removal) and bucking. This isn't a slam on the millions of people who used and axe and helped it evolve - it just took the next step.
-Cliff
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