Cheap Knife vs Expensive Custom

[Talon]

Knives,one of my favourite subjects.I've used cheap ones up to expensive production,my advice would be to go to Cromwell tools and buy a bar of o1 and make your own.It's a good skill to learn and o1 is an easy steel for the back yard knife builder.It holds and keeps a fine edge,is easy to sharpen and is plenty tough.

An Alan Wood woodlore knife is nothing more than a £20 lump of steel and wood with £300 worth of Ray Mears hype attached to it.
A scandi grind bushcraft knife is very easy to make,you can harden it with a charcoal barbecue,and you can temper it in a conventional oven.

Tomahawks are an excellent weapon but a poor substitute for a good camp axe,tomahawks in general don't have much wedge to the blade,this makes them a poor choice for splitting wood (though I do have one and use it)

a kukri,hatchet or billhook are much better suited to our northern European climate.Couple one of those with a four to five inch fixed blade and you can handle 90% of chores,from chopping/splitting to skinning/butchering/carving.

Though I am currently using a fallkniven h1 it does the job no better than one I can make for a few quid with a hacksaw and a few files.
When I was younger I was sucked into buying expensive knives,don't waste your cash.A knife is for cutting not prying.Cheap old carbon steel knives cut great and are easier to sharpen than modern stainless steels.
Like Montblanc said our ancestors did very well with the basic English and French pattern butcher knife.