There is a people north of Mongolia,previously known as Yakut,but who are now called what they have always called themselves-Saha.
Their country,the Saha Republic(currently a part of RF,unfortunately for them),stretches from the Himalayan plateau all the way to the Arctic ocean,the main drainage being the enormous Lena river.
It is theorised that very long ago Saha came out of western China/Mongolia region,and they carried with them many a foreign to Siberian tribes skill-horses and horsemanship,domesticated reindeer herding,and many more,chief among those-the Ferrous metalworking.Complete with the Reduction bloomery process,heat-treating of carbon alloys,varying the level of C in their alloy,forge-welding,et c.,the whole shebang.
In spite of all the trades,and trading that they excelled at,they were primarily the hunters and trappers of the taiga.A such,they used dog teams to get around in winter,or sometimes their wooly little horses,but most often travelled on foot.In either case,their primary tool,the right-hand tool so to speak,was a spear-shaped machete/ice-chisel,in effect,of a very complex form(Stormcrow would dig it
.
Naturally it was a weapon as well(at some point an entire martial art style developed out of using it),but primarily it was for cutting trail,and all manner of camp chores,from carving(deadfalls et c),to chopping,to splitting,every manner of woodworking chore.But also cutting holes in the ice to fish,or to water stock,or for a myriad other reasons.
Sometimes that "spear"(called btw "batyjyah",or a longer,more specialised weaponised one-a "batas")was a socket tool,sometimes not,and had this intricate scarf joint+lashing to the haft.
The lengh of haft could differ from less than a couple feet to 10' or more(ice gets thick there(actually,a village in north of Saha,Oymiacon, is where the coldest temps were recorded anywhere barring the Antarctic),and it sucks bending over when chopping ice...
Where Am i going with this...Maybe to the Idea of this thread,that the universal woodland tool would be a socketed axe/adze,a "celt",as they were indeed so widespread throughout first Asia,then points West...Saha tool was not,exactly,but i still decided to further obfuscate this thread...
It was a thick,stout single-bevel blade,with a very deep fuller on only one side,making it's cut semi-circular and Very aggressive.
I often wondered why they chose this,more of a knife-shape,vs a hatchet(they were producing axes and hatchets all through their long history),as a universal wondering-about-the-woods tool....
And conversely,why Were the "celt" type lashed-on axes so widespread,when a machete-like tool is so versatile and efficient...
(it is no accident,btw,that the discussion turned to Japanese adze et c.,that whole neck of the woods(China,from whence the the bronze and ironwork came to Japan),seems to be where the iron,bronze,all the complex tooling seems to've originated...Somewhere West of China,who recieved it in a pretty much ready form about 2500 years ago,and possibly South,Himalaya,North India,all the traces lead there,so far...)
Sorry about this long digression!