This is a busy time of year around the house. The winter was quite pleasant with a few days
dipping into the mid-30s. I realize that
for a lot of folks a winter without freezing temperatures sounds too good to be
true but that’s the norm in these parts.
Just remember, however, that come summertime we’ll have heatwaves with an
unrelenting sun bringing temperatures into the triple digits. It’s not uncommon for the heat index to reach
110 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat exhaustion
is a frequent occurrence and every year a few poor souls succumb to heat
stroke. Last summer a fellow wandered
into a backyard about seventy miles south of us and collapsed. The residence is just north of the Rio Grande
and this fellow had swum the river the day before. Like most people who enter this country
clandestinely he was from a large city in Central America and had no bushcraft
experience. Of course, he was unaccustomed
to the temps we see in Deep South Texas.
By the time paramedics arrived the man had slipped into the long goodbye. The news reported his body temperature was
109 degrees at the time of death. With
that said, you’ll understand why we approach any sort of outdoor work with a
degree of caution. Some of the most
intense exertion is with the machete; and yet, the machete is the most commonly
used tool in the ranchlands. I’ll drive
down a dirt road and spot someone cleaning the brush along a fenceline. In his hand will be a machete. I stopped to visit a relative and when he
reached into his pickup toolbox I spotted a couple of well-used machetes. The dogs started barking furiously a few days
ago and my son looked out his bedroom window and spotted a large rattlesnake
slithering onto the front porch. He
grabbed a Taurus Judge stoked with #6s and a machete. The Judge stopped the rattler before he
knocked on the front door and the machete removed sixteen rattlers for the
coffee can. (We have a coffee can filled
with rattlers.) Every March I have to
whack the large sunflowers around the graywater pond. I use a machete. I’ll walk into the farm & ranch store or
perhaps one of the hardware stores in the towns sixty miles south of us and the
first thing I’ll check are the machetes.
You can never own too many machetes.
When they get worn out you just bring them back to life with various
modifications and start things anew.
I’ve posted a number of articles on machete modifications and over the
next week or two I’m going to post another couple of articles on more mods.
What makes a knife-man a knife-man is hard to say but I
attribute it to untold generations of males living or dying by the quality of
their cutting tools be they rock, bone, tooth, copper, bronze, iron or
steel. So I imagine that somewhere within
a multitude of sinuous cerebral sulci lays buried that collective knowledge
shared from one generation to another that the knife is a key to survival.
There are scores of machete styles and it seems that
geographical regions around the globe have spawned their own preferred designs be
they the Malaysian parang, the Philippine bolo, the African panga, or the
quintessential Latin hoja. But even within the geographical areas
variations occur. In Latin America, for
example, the machete has as many morphs and mutations as does the tulip. And yet, when one thinks of a Latin American
machete what comes to mind is a carbon steel tool with a thin blade between 22
inches and 24 inches long with a wooden handle measuring about five inches. There is a gentle upsweep of the blade near
the point and the numbers 1070, 1074, 1075 come to mind when calculating the
percentage of carbon mixed with iron to form the steel. And this, my friends, is the preferred
machete style in South Texas. You see,
South Texas is a land made for the machete.
Long ago the Great Spirit looked down on the earth and said I will make
a place for the beloved machete and so South Texas was created. Nearly every plant is blessed with thorns and
in between is cacti of a few dozen motifs and patterns. Outsiders call the region The Thorn Forest stricken
as they are—both literally and figuratively—by what seems to them a nightmare
of hypodermic interruptions. But to the
people who grew up in this land of varied plant diversity and a stark and yet
unruly magnificence it is called The Brushlands or when a great deal of love is
attached, El Monte.
Top to Bottom: Tramontina 24" Imacasa 24" and Incolma Gavilan 22"
So it is then that the machete plays a starring role in that
saga called Living in the Brushlands. No one ever asks, “Do you have a
machete?” Instead they say, “Where’s
your machete?” You’ll find them hanging
from nails in barns or lying on a bench in the workshop. You’ll find them tucked behind the seat of a
pickup or in the truck’s toolbox. You’ll
walk into hardware stores and find piles of machetes waiting to be
adopted. Or you can just saunter into
Mexico a few miles on down the road and buy El Salvadorian, Columbian,
Ecuadorian, Venezuelan and Brazilian machetes for pennies on the dollar. It’s not unusual to buy ten or more at a time
then go home only to return a year later and buy ten more. Machetes see a lot of work in this land and
unfortunately they receive a lot of abuse from ranch hands and
farmworkers. A couple of years ago I was
walking in the woods about a quarter mile from the house and I saw something
leaning against a mesquite tree. I
ambled over to the object and was presented with a gift: An Imacasa 24 inch
machete in very good condition. I figure
some long-distance-traveler had lifted it from a barn somewhere along the line
and then either abandoned it next to the mesquite tree or forgotten it when he
had to skedaddle in the middle of the night.
So how do the various popular brands of machete compare? Looking at forums and other websites I take
it that in the heartland the three most widely available machete brands are
Tramontina, Imacasa and Gavilan. Other brands
are available but I don’t see a lot of reference to them on forums so for this
post I’ll stick to the three brands mentioned above. Besides, brands like Condor have, in my
opinion, gotten too expensive and thus are at the upper edges of what your
typical machete ought to be.
Nonetheless, in later posts I’ll examine additional brands including the
Condor. Let’s make it clear at the
outset that I do not favor machetes made of stainless steel since invariably
the steel is of poor quality. Cheap
stainless steel like 420 or 440A will take an edge but will lose that edge even
faster. I am so prejudiced against
stainless that I will not even consider 420 HC or 440C. Others may argue that those incarnations are
alright but I have chosen to have nothing to do with them. And one more thing: Whenever somebody tells
you that stainless steel machetes are better than carbon steel machetes then
just turn the page confident in the knowledge that the writer is a neophyte
without much experience using machetes.
By far the best machete blades are carbon steel ranging from 1070 to
1075. Tramontina is 1070, for example,
and Imacasa is 1074 so it is slightly stronger steel. The Incolma Gavilan produced in Colombia is
also carbon steel but I do not know the grade.
I imagine its numbers fall in the same range as the other two machete
makes mentioned above. All three
machetes pictured have the traditional thin blades measuring about 1.5 mm near
the handle tapering to about one millimeter at the tip. The blades are springy and that means they’re
designed for whacking light material like herbaceous and woody shrubs as well
as small branches or slicing cactus pads.
WARNING: I understand that
bushcrafters living north of the 36th Parallel want to mess around
with machetes and that’s a good thing…but I’ve seen too many YouTube videos where
some reviewer living to the north will buy a machete and then look around for
something to whack. “Whoa!” he
says. “There’s a fallen birch tree
yonder.” So he adjusts his camera and
starts whacking. “Wow!” he gasps
breathing hard and sweating. “This machete
can even chop through this birch tree (or elm, pine, maple etc.) and it only
took me six-hundred whacks to penetrate….”
But folks, don’t try it. Get an
axe for crying out loud. Don’t indulge
in such frivolous behavior. God gave us
brains to know what tool to use and for tree trunks and mega-branches He gave
us an axe. The machete is for thorn
scrub and vines and bamboo and cacti and finger-sized limbs and rattlesnake
rattlers. An axe is for tree trunks and
mega-branches. Besides, you don’t want
to destroy the tendons and ligaments in your wrist and elbow and even in your
shoulder and that can happen (and probably will happen) if you try the YouTube
silliness and whack a tree trunk to death with a 1.5 mm thick blade. By the way, shoulder bursitis is common when
using a machete of improper length. Machetes
blades measure from about 12 inches to 30 inches. As noted above, the most common machete blade
length in South Texas is 24 inches though occasionally you’ll find someone
using a 22 inch blade. The length is
especially important for reaching in to thorny shrubs and branches without
getting the pin-cushion treatment. But
the 24 inch blade also aids in whacking weedy shrubs where the stem must be
severed clean. If the user has to constantly
bend down to whack stems then he’ll become fatigued and that will lead to
improper cutting technique. As a result
the user will most likely develop bursitis.
Shorter blades are popular for less strenuous tasks and for use in
places where the plants don’t bite back.
They also make good survival tools but that’s another subject we’ll
tackle in a few weeks. ONE MORE NOTE:
Wear eye protection! Don’t think you can
whack away and never suffer any sort of eye injury. One day you’ll be listlessly swinging the
blade and WHAM you’ll get a searing
pain in your eye or on your eyelid and it will occur to you that you’ve been
wounded. An hour later at the doctor’s office
the thought will creep into your mind that had you just been wearing eye
protectors this wouldn’t have happened.
So don’t be foolish thinking you are immune to such events. It can and will happen if you use a machete
long enough. So wear eye protection!
Do I have a favorite machete brand? Allow me to say it this way: For general work
around the ranch I want a carbon steel blade either 22 or 24 inches long with
either a wooden or plastic handle that is not too thick or cumbersome. I want springy steel that’s about 1.5 mm near
the handle and about 1 mm thick at the blade tip. I don’t want the blade too heavily weighted at
the tip as seen on some makes. A rather
straight blade is preferred in my opinion.
I want steel that has been properly tempered so that it will hold its
edge and yet reasonably easy to sharpen with a file or diamond stone. I prefer darkened blades to shiny blades but
that is not of major importance. A blade
that has a nice ring to it when struck hard with your fingernail usually
indicates well-tempered steel of adequate carbon content. I do not like 1045 carbon steel nor am I that
enamored with 1060 steel though I like 5160 steel and if the new Ontario Knife
& Tool Bushcraft machete made from 5160 steel did not require a customer take
out a new mortgage on his house and raffle off his wife I’d consider buying
one. Only in America do people go bonkers
over buying things and they spend and spend and spend and truth be known they
don’t need most of the things they buy.
The Gavilan 22 inch machete I bought brand new a few weeks ago cost me
$10.00 total. I dare say it will do just
about anything the new Ontario Bushcraft machete will do and I saved over a
hundred bucks. I think it pays to be
frugal.