It getting close to summer down south, the briars will be thick, the mosquitos ferocious, and the heat / humidity will drive people indoors. ( wimps. ). I wanted a new machete this year, lighter than my Condor and hopefully a slightly larger more comfortable handle than my Tram. ( I've got like XL size hands and it's hard for me to get a good fit on most handles.) After getting to try out a freinds CS back during hunting season wah wah wah went the Internet and KnifeCenter hooked me up for $16.95 USD. Even with factory edge and no sheath it's not bad IMHO. YMMV. 1055 steel, 18" blade, 16 3/8 actual cutting edge, 3mm thick, 5" handle, mine is 1-3/32" thick at the thickest section. How bout some pics to carry this along? Right-o, coming up...
Pic 1- There are sheaths available but I hate the floppy nylon type, I got a mil-spec from Midway and with a bit of redneck engineering it works just fine. Pic 2- think what you want, at least it's not chi-com. That matters to me. Pic 3- This has a solid polypropylene plastic handle, the one I tried out and my LTC have a hard durometer type of pvc rubber. It's not bad as the overall weight is fairly light so not much shock. I went over it with a flap wheel and a cup brush to remove any flash from the injection molding and the points on the pyramid grip pattern. I've been using it with and without gloves with no issues.
1- CS can be hit or miss on their budget tool sharpening. I've gotten both decently sharp and sharp as a proverbial brick. This one was decent, I might call it coarse belt sharp, you could have taken it out to cut brush straight away. You guys know me, that just wasn't gonna do... I took the Lansky to it. The diamond rods for about 20 strokes the switching to white ceramic for a bit ( I go into Homer Simpson haze mode and go "duuuuuuhhhh" so I lost count. Clean slice paper will do. 2-I had a piece of synthetic wine cork laying there from another project, simulated wild mushroom or small game that I might do up in the field? ( Please note that all these pics were before I got my Work Sharp in, the turn box Lansky and a pull thru were used. She's hair poppin arm shavin scarrryy now. ) 3- needed to hack up a few fetch stick for my pupski, these 1" sections were 1 hit "whack" cuts. Clean cut edges all the way thru multiple times. No noticeable loss of sharpness or edge deformation was seen.
Pics posted in reverse, sorry about that. Pic 2- Another test I require is fire building. The as stamped spine had fairly sharp edges and proved sufficient for magnesium block, fatwood, and ferro rod. The choil would initially do it too but I bumped that edge off with a Baronyx stone as I like to choke up on it there. Pic 1- Yes, I'm once again building fires in my storeroom/mancave....as it is once again coming a blinking flood outside!
Again they are reversed, somewhat frustrating. 2- A limb came down one night, not super hard and green. Up to app 3" on the larger end. 1- starting at the top (1") it was 1 hit cuts. Getting to the 2" size, 2 cuts, 1 good hit on each side. 3" takes a hit or 2 on each side but again not real loss of edge or damage is seen.
Now I know y'all have seen me do this before, but I consider it an essential test of what I want a machete to do. When I go off walkabout the machete is what I reach for first when I want to cut something. I have an Izula in my pack ( survival knife) and a folder in my pocket. If I need to cut a piece of bait or trim an end on a fishing line yeah I use them, but 90% of the time I grab the machete. To do this I'm slicing small stuff right down at my fingertips. So far I still have all my fingertips too.
There you go, a couple of boiled eggs, sprinkle of cheese, one of about 5 different types of dressing I keep on hand, and a healthy lunch is served. I rather like this thing. It stays decently sharp, is easy to resharpen. Cuts well for a budget 1055 tool. It's cheap enough that you don't feel bad thrashing the heck out of it, using a file or belt sander to fix whatever you did to it. Even if it would suck you could replace it if you dropped it overboard while boating or fishing, would'nt be like you sank a Turley or something. It's strapped to my pack, I intend to run it for a while unless something that fits as well come into view. I think the handle, both in size and construction is a good selling point. I would give it a positive/good buy rating if you need a decent machete to carry around.
