That was my first thought.
Throw some knots into the hardwood fray and you'd be well on your way to a day of cussin'.
There's something elegant about the simplicity of a splitting maul or felling axe.
They can take on and dispatch so many different kinds of chopping or splitting jobs.
Complicating the basic design never seems to improve it, unless it's for some very specific use.
That's one of those "looks better on the sketch pad than it does in real life" kind of products. Designed based on "strategy" and not "implementation" in mind.
I would hate to swing something like that more than 2-3 times.