Another bullshit coming out from Mr. Gaston
Both hollow and flat will grow thick for each serious sharpening. You also didn't mention that hollow ground will be always weaker compare to flat or convex ground thus it high likely to took more damage from hard using.
Hollow ground profile is excellent for pure cutting performance but far from the best all around.
It is of course pointless to argue with you, but for the sake of geometry, the sides of a hollow grind are often parallel or close to parallel for a good distance away from the edge shoulder (often close to 1/4", which is way beyond where any sharpening wear can reach): Two parallels do not change their distance from one another: That is why they are called "parallels".
Hollow Grinds typically resist side loads better than Full Flat Grinds when chopping, because Hollow Grinds often have low sabre grinds, which brings the full spine thickness closer to being buried into the wood: Once the full spine thickness is wedged, it will pry the wood away from the edge below it in a way the Full Flat Grind won't, since a Full Flat Grind's maximum spine thickness is still likely way above the wood.
I would rarely baton any knife, since the nature of that "work" micro-rolls any kind of sharp apex (unlike with chopping, batoning the knife will always cause the blade to lean as it bites, because the edge is not engaged, so it is not stabilized to go in any particular direction), but I would guess the naturally skewed nature of hitting a knife with the edge not stabilized -by any initial biting- is where you get half moon breaks wrenched out of Hollow Grinds, hence their -current- bad reputation... Alas, Full Flat Grinds are also vulnerable to this kind of wrongheaded use, so the solution has been to "swell" the whole flat of the blade to stabilize it in the wood sooner, making the whole blade inherently duller...
The only real downside of Saber Hollow Grinds compared to Full Flat Grinds is that the Sabre Hollow Grind makes for a considerably heavier knife. So the Full Flat Grind is more weight efficient, but grows a little thicker over time, owing its lack of side parallelism. A fair trade in most cases. Hollow Grinds is why very old Randalls can still be sharp as new. However, if the SOG is 0.040" at the edge shoulders (like the bigger Chris Reeve one-piece types are), while Randalls are 0.020", then it pretty much squanders its Hollow Grind performance for what should be unnecessary strength... If that is the case, then you probably have people who hit the spine of their knives with the edge unengaged to thank for that overbuilt edge...
Gaston
