"Knives"

Rod Garcia talked about knives and knife sharpening. Rod makes the "Skookum Bush Tool", which is a very exellent wilderness knife (http://www.skookumbushtool.com/). He crafted it after the description of the perfect bush knife in the book "Bushcraft" by Mors Kochanski (around $12 on amazon.com). Here he is holding one up:
And here he is holding up one of the blades of an unfinished knife:

The holes in the handle are for tying the knife onto a stick for reaching, such as to cut a limb. Don't ever throw it like a spear. You might be throwing away your primary weapon. The Skookum has a small hole near the tip of the blade. It's for making the knife into shears. He pinned the blade between two small boards with a nail, then used it like a paper-cutter to chop. He chopped a willow stick about the thickness of a fat pencil as a demonstration:

The things we learned from him: A knife cuts where the energy goes. Consider where your follw-through cut will go. Batoning saves energy. Lay the knife blade on a limb and smack it with a baton. The baton is made of a piece of wood slightly smaller than your wrist and about 12" to 18" long.

A neck-hung sheath is easier to get to in cold climates when you're bundled up in lots of clothes and coats, than one on your belt.

He talked briefly about knife-sharpening and showed us some angles and the direction to go, and what materials to use. His advice was to go to http://www.youtube.com/ and watch videos by Ray Mears on knife sharpening.