Knife Debate.

[TheFeniX]

For a machete, you do want a dual zone grind - razor sharp at the first 2-3 inches of the tip for precision cutting, the rest is "heavy duty cutting" sharp. As with all percussion tools, you tend to hit bigger objects with a spot 1/3rd down from the tip. I did the same grind for an utility Kukri I made for someone, once.

Hell, machete isn't even a well-defined term. The hillbilly's I've seen who bother had straight machetes, the thinner ones, left the edge semi-sharp and sharpened the lower part (closer to the grip) to a razors edge. They then used the lower part of the blade to fillet fish.

"Hey man... you want a fillet knife?"
"Uh... sure."
Rednecks man. Fuckin' rednecks.

I prefer the thin-blade machetes, but I've never had to chop wood with one (I probably would avoid doing it). But the lighter weight ones blow through most foliage and (when I was younger) I could swing one all day while making lightsaber noises. For bits of chopping wood, Jason had some thick-bladed serial-killer machete he'd use to cut down small trees. Even still, there's usually enough shit lying around to make a fire and it's hot as balls in Texas most days/nights anyways.

[Elheru Aran]

The indigenous people I saw using machetes in Latin America and Africa didn't bother with any fancy sharpening. Mostly because they were generally just chopping stuff, and if they needed a sharper tool, they usually carried knives or didn't care that the machete might have had something of a thick, rough edge.

To be fair I should've specified that most 'bushcraft' tends to note that you should carry a smaller knife alongside the machete/big knife for tasks it's better suited for, and if you can only have one knife, get something medium-sized rather than going to either extreme, but tend a bit towards the smaller side (IE: go for a 6" blade over a 12").