another comment..

a lot of survival folks will tell you that you need a knife to baton wood with... and you in effect need a knife to act like a sword.

you do not need to baton wood with a knife. A small axe can split wood well.

you will not normally be cutting large logs in the field so splitting wood is not that useful and expends too much energy better spent doing other things.

sometimes when desperate you may need to spit wood to get something that is dry but your axe would do that.

a decent fixed blade can be attached to a pole and used for various purposes.

I burn large logs at the ends and have used fire to cut logs even. Why waste energy cutting and splitting wood if you don't need to do so?