Bounty hunter - let me offer a different point of view:

RE: Bushman: There is a hole drilled in the handle that you can use to put a wood screw or nail through into the spear shaft. And the tapered socket is the only effective way to haft wood to a metal tool.

First, though, the shaft needs to be shaped - the Bushman socket is properly tapered - widest at the opening. That's actually the proper way to make a socket - be it for a bodkin arrow point, a lance, or an expedient spear. A straight cylindrical socket is very impractical to properly fit to a shaft without a lathe and even then it is a compromise as the wood shrinks and swells from drying out/getting soaked, will often split the shaft from transfering axial shock directly to the end of the shaft, etc.

Shaping the shaft for the socket is simple enough - use the Bushman as a drawknife (carefully - a leather glove on the off-hand is a smart precaution). Lay the shaft out in front of you, passing between your feet (grip shaft with feet)), across your strong-side thigh, and ending up about at your strong-side hip or a little short of that, depending on your body proportions. Draw, rotate, draw, rotate - it doesn't take very long. You can vary position/grip of the shaft by twining your feet/lower legs around the shaft - easier to show/do than write about.

Having hafted both types (hollow-handle knives and Bushman), there is no question in my mind that the Bushman approach is real-world superior - and after all, thousands of years of armorers using tapered sockets probably wasn't just tradition. I suspect that the hollow-handle knife designers never went to a museum and studied medveial weaponry details or visited aboriginal blacksmiths in the bush... even a modern shovel uses a tapered socket, not a cylindrical one, and the reasons are the same - grip, transfer of axial and lateral forces, fit, etc. For another modern example, examine a quality wood chisel with a wooden handle - tapered socket. (Cheesy ones are not made that way - the best ones are).

We have a couple of Bushman knives and a couple of mini-Bushmans. They are what I call "truck" or "car" knives - not routinely carried on person, but useful & cheap enough to keep in vehicle kits. Very sharp and easy to keep that way - I suspect the Rockwell hardness is not as high as we have become accustomed to so that they are far less likely to break - I can straighten a bend in the woods, but a broken knife... reading old Africa tales, authors claimed the abos prefered "softer" knives and spear points for exactly that reason.

I think the mini is a much more practical size - YMMV. And I have an issue with the lack of a guard when used as a knife, which is exacerbated by the taper towards the sharp. I think of them more as single-edged stabbing spear heads that can be used as a knife than the other way around... but Bagheera uses Bushman/minis as the kitchen and GP knives in his Scout Troop in Holland and has reported here very favorably about them in those uses.

Anyway, some food for thought - If a spear is an object, I'll argue strenuously that the Bushman approach is far more practical than any non-tapered socket in a hollow-handled knife.

Feel free to argue otherwise - I'm open minded.

Regards,

Tom