I’ve done some pretty fair hacking with narrow slats. I’m sure you could fire-harden lots of different woods to make a decent machete or sword.
That was my thought.
People have been putting spears and arrows into the fire for many thousands of years.
Let me know when they sell an Obsidian knife set.
:)
It is myth that putting wood in a fire hardens it; it only destroys it. Two decades ago Dr. Kamke came up with a process of putting low density wood into a chamber (bomb) introduce steam and compress it to densify it. There was no need to remove the hemicellulose or lignin. I still have sample from him. While the intent was to use it structural members not knives it was very dense and decay resistant. Cellulose burns easily no matter how dense it is.
Fire-hardening wood spears goes back to Neanderthals.