Yes, if you need to ream a bowl or a hole in wood for either a fire drill on the "bowl" or a "hole" for making cord attachments for spoons, or cups or a chopping board for food, with a swedge you can turn the knife against the swedge edge rather than the main blade edge and preserve this for game work.

I find "reaming" to be a sure fire task to blunt the edge on the main blade near the tip...or roll it over...and having a sharp edge here is great for gralloch work on deer or any varmints...especially for cutting around the anus to detach the bowel so it can be pulled back through to the stomach cavity or for doing the windpipe in a similar vein...so it helps on these tasks.

Also if you ever "nap" flint for arrow heads using the swedge edge preserves the main one...this definately can "roll" your edge...and ideally if you can collect a selection of nice shaped stones for this task it helps. Napping flint can also be handy for making supplement spark strikers...although there are very cool sparks from flint....and they need special tinder. Some dried fungus usually works best.

Finally on a military aspect if you are trimming fuse wire or trip wire I use the swedge as it just unnecessarily blunts my main edge and carrying pliers just for this is unwanted extra weight...my Leatherman is the "secaturs" version as I use these more on foilage.

The swedge has many uses...some doubtless I have forgotten...but they were always valued on Bowies. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />