I'm not sure they have, Marcinek.
Blade Dude, I think the answer has to do with the role knives and swords have in our culture. Weapons in general, actually. That's why you hit on the example of the impact wrench. There has always been a variety of tool that indicates status and achievement into which men, mostly, have invested a form of spiritual importance. It is why swords are present at ceremonies, why they are often jeweled and made of expensive metals, why in the age of better weapons people even continue to own swords at all. There is more to the knife and the sword than just their existence as tools. Historically we have never invested shovels or impact wrenches with this sense of reverence. But we have done this to horses, and I suspect this has carried over to cars and trucks. There is a status, and for some an investment of spiritual value, to these tools and, in the case of horses, animals, that gives them an importance greater than their mere utility. I think the fit, finish, beauty, and cost of a Sebenza put it in the class of tool that opens it up to this form of near-religious fetishization. If Reeve made a replaceable-blade box cutter with the same care and expertise as he makes folding knives, I suspect they would not receive the same spiritual investment, even if the price were as high as his knives.
Fireams, too, have this role in our culture and get treated the same way. Sometimes it's because they are like museum pieces and have historical importance, like my M1. It shoots great and is an outstanding firearm in every respect, but if you want to think of its history, it does have what the Pacific islanders would call Mana. It is a 1942 Springfield M1 with "matching" drawing numbers on the parts and a serial number in the low 100,000s. It no doubt saw combat in WWII and was restocked for the Korean War and has rack numbers grease-penciled on the grip pommel. It is one of the weapons that protected democracy. Maybe it helped liberate the Philippines, or clear the way to free captives in the Nazi camps, or achieve the breakout at Chosin Reservoir. Even if it didn't do these things, even if it were pristine, in an original crate, wrapped in cosmoline paper, it would still evoke reverence (maybe more so for that). And yet millions were made. It is a resilient tool capable of taking immense abuse, just like the Sebenza. I could just as easily schlep the M1 through the woods and kill an elk or throw it in the back of the truck as a road-trip gun as a Sebenza owner can score drywall or cut and pull up a carpet. Whether I do depends on whether I give it that reverence we give to things like swords or horses.
There is also my 1942 Soviet M38 carbine. I know this weapon, too, may have helped defeat the Nazis. Perhaps it was carried by an atilleryman at Stalingrad. But because it was produced in numbers far exceeding the M1, was not left to me by my late brother like my M1, and resembles a Stanley utility knife more than it does the Sebenza, I do take it to the woods to hunt elk and throw it in the truck as a road-trip gun. It does have Mana, I suppose, but those spirits just don't speak as loudly as the ones in the Garand.
Anyway, it's more than, "Some people do, some people don't/to each his own," as you've rightly intuited, Blade Dude. There is a why, and I think it has to do with the special role weapons and some vehicles have in our culture and how we endow them with special meaning that makes us not want to use them for the prosaic tasks they no doubt would excel at.
Zieg
