I recovered a tool from an intersection during the homeward leg of a bike ride:
The scabbard is a bit the worse for having been run over by traffic, but the knife is still in good shape.
The back of the blade has been well and truly mushroomed:
The blade edge doesn’t have nearly as much damage as you’d (well, I’d) expect from all the hammering on the back and sides:
The molded handle suggests it’s a commercial product, but it has no branding, no maker’s mark, no identification of any kind.
Google Image Search returns useless views of tail lights and rifles. Here, try it for yourself:
I have no idea what it’s used for.
Do you?
[Update: It’s a Bell System Cable-Sheath Splitting Knife, made by Klein Tools. More details in the comments … ]
I’ll leave everything below as I was thinking this through and found it while starting to use words like trades, commercial, heavy duty. It’s apparent now why there is no longer a logo, it was bashed out of existence.
https://www.kleintools.com/catalog/telecom-cutting/bell-system-cable-sheath-splitting-knife
Don’t you just love a good mystery? You have to imagine that this is either a repurposed or industry specific tool and certainly not for typical food prep. Just considering you found it on the road would tell me it fell off a truck from a job site. With all the bash marks on the sides and the mushroomed top it takes a lot of abuse and is driven in and often beaten out side to side. That blunt cutting edge has got to be for something harder in order to be more durable, but I doubt something like bricks or blocks, but certainly something hard on the outside and softer beneath. Some sort of remodeling or demolition tool perhaps? Ceramic tile, floor tile, etc.
Excellent!
Now that I know exactly where to look, there’s a barely visible Klein logo.
You can tell it’s a classic tool, because the Bell System vanished in the mid-80s. I suppose Verizon line workers must occasionally split cable sheaths dating back to The Good Old Days. Surely, they don’t chop their way into fiber cables!
Well done!
Arggh, laptop on the belly makes for bad typing. Postop foot is recovering, but it’s going to be a while.
Originally:
Other descriptions say it’s for the lead sheathing on cables.
How about trimming shakes for a roof? That would account for the short length and mushrooming from getting bashed with a large hammer.
There are shingle hatchets, usually with a screw/locating pin and a series of holes to get the offset right. (Can’t recall if it’s for width or an exposure gage. The latter would make more sense.) Never used one, but I’ve seem them somewhere.
I was going to guess tile, but it looks like we’ve got a winner above.