I also disagree with the notion that a knife is not the right tool for the job. In the situations you encounter in the woods (gnarly wood, soft ground, no chopping blocks) a knife is often the ideal tool for splitting. Really, you are using the knife as a froe, which is an ancient tool. It goes way farther back than YouTube. It is not some kind of exceptional abuse for a well made outdoors knife.
When you made your fires in the monsoon, how did you get down to dry wood? If you didn't split it, I guess you had to shave off the outer layer of wet wood? That works, and normally I make a featherstick for kindling. But splitting is faster for kindling and small fuel; I like to grab a few larger branches and cross cut them to length, then split them into quarters or eighths. You can very quickly get a big pile of kindling that's guaranteed to burn well.
Sometimes its hard to find ideal kindling like dead branches on trees, and you have to make do with wet wood on the ground. You want to be able to split this wood. I also like to take a downed tree or large limb found near camp and use that for all my firewood, from kindling to large fuel. With a decent knife and folding saw this is easily done. Sometimes that's more efficient than walking all around the woods looking for firewood.
My philosophy for firemaking is to expend the least effort and get the maximum return. Splitting wood with my knife often achieves those ends.
