BK6 Patrol Machete Passaround Signup and Review Thread

**Ethan Becker** · 02-28-2011, 07:11 PM

Hey Switchblade......

Glad you enjoyed yourself.....Very nice pics and GREAT choices of of tasks to take those pics of.....YEAH.....I do love to see my babies out there WORKING.....Thanks a bunch for the feeling I got seeing this post......

And a GREAT big thanks to you too Mr. Moose......

All Best.......

ethan

**kg4ghn** · 03-01-2011, 11:30 AM

Great review!

It's gonna be hard keeping up with that.

**dingobubba** · 03-01-2011, 12:10 PM

That was cool! Don't know how I missed this passaround.

**slapper** · 03-05-2011, 07:24 PM

Great review! now i need one.

**Switchblade61** · 03-05-2011, 08:51 PM

Today I had an other opportunity to go outside and play with the BK6. This time I had a companion in 6shooter, who wanted to get his paws on the Patrol Machete, while it was here in BC on official visit. So, we met and headed up on the mountain to find a good spot in the forest. Soon we came to a suitable area and 6shooter did not waste any time to get some action with this blade.
Here he is chopping a frozen, dead tree.

A closer shot of the chopping subject.

The log was really frozen hard inside, of course it was easier to stick the blade in, parallel with the grain.
After the sectioning...

A family shot with some of the relatives up here...

6shooter working on a piece of greenwood.

Here he is again, putting a point on a frozen stick.

More to follow...

**Switchblade61** · 03-05-2011, 09:08 PM

More frozen log sectioning... This log was over 5" in diameter.

A closer shot...

Another close up, going with the grain ...

We decided to take down this 4" diameter standing, but dead tree.
6shooter did the first half of the work...

... then I carried on with the task.

Note the green moss on the tree.

The tree has fallen...

Trophy shot...

Then 6shooter decided to do some more chopping...

More to come...

**Switchblade61** · 03-05-2011, 09:27 PM

Next, I worked a little with the tip of the BK6. I repeatedly stabbed it into the frozen log and pried out wood pieces. I have made considerable damage to the log in no time... with no wear on the blade. This tip can take some abuse for sure.

A partial shot of the "Carnage in the woods"...

Fatwood candle and BK6... (this is BC after all...)

Patrol Machete cleaned up, put away and ready to leave the "battlefield".

We had a decent day with some sunshine and cool, but not cold temperatures.
Here are my thoughts on this blade in a nutshell: I like the BK6 very much. I find it quite a useful tool. It has a nice weight forward balance and it is not heavy at all. I think the length is just right (not too long, not too short), fairly easy to maneuver and still has a good reach. The handle is a typical Becker, so it's comfortable and secure. The sheath is nothing to write home about, but it does the job.
I think 6shooter is going to tell us his impressions as well.
The BK6 will be leaving Monday to JV3 to continue its adventures in its home country.
My thanks go to Moose for the opportunity to test this blade.

Thanks for looking!

**Moosez45** · 03-05-2011, 09:31 PM

wow

Great job. I'm at a loss for words, so, I'll get back to you on this one.

Whatchoo gonna send as your PIF? Or is it a secret, that JV3 will get to share with us?

Moose

**Switchblade61** · 03-05-2011, 09:54 PM

Originally Posted by moosez45

wow

Whatchoo gonna send as your PIF? Or is it a secret, that JV3 will get to share with us?

Moose

I would like it to be a surprise, so JV3 will tell to everyone.

**6shooter** · 03-06-2011, 01:02 AM

Firstly, thanks to Moose for this passaround, and for including Canadians in it

. Second, thanks to Switchblade for letting me get some time in with this thing while he had it.

I had a ton of fun using this thing. It's comfy, as to be expected from the Becker handles, and balances well for it's intended purpose. It was thicker than I thought it was going to be, I was expecting a more standard machete thickness.

Once you find the sweet spot it chops like a dream, and doesn't transfer much shock to your hands. Let me tell you, the wood we were hacking today was SOLID. That fallen dead tree was like steel in the middle, and the tree we felled, while not frozen, was also very hard. The edge was no worse for wear at the end of the day.

For finer work I found it handles surprisingly well for it's size. I didn't have any troubles making notches using the chest lever grip. For fuzzstick making, planting the tip and holding the blade steady while moving the stick the create shavings worked well.

As a draw knife I thought it was awesome. The swell at the forward recurve part of the blade makes for a nice spot to grab onto, and it's easy to control to make fine shavings, perhaps for shaping out a piece for fine work, or to bear down on and remove more material, to strip bark or create a flat surface.

All in all I was really impressed with the versatility of this blade. It held it's own in the frozen forests of BC no problem.

**Moosez45** · 03-22-2011, 03:58 PM

So, where's my machete at? Been a while since we've seen a post about it, and time is coming up for the next person. JV3, you got anything yet?

Moose

**JV3** · 03-22-2011, 04:22 PM

i have all the pics...just doing the write-up (might finish it tonight or tomorrow). it'll be sent to gytheran later this week (he should have it by saturday, if not monday, at the latest).

**JV3** · 03-22-2011, 09:06 PM

first things first, thank you very much to moose for this pass-around and to switchblade61 for the folder and the capsule.

now onto the review...i'm a lefty so it's obvious how i feel about the sheath

switchblade61 and 6shooter already did an excellent review of what the patrol machete is capable of so i'm not going to repeat that here. what i did was to basically put it head to head against my other choppers. i don't have my bk-9 anymore (sold it to gonadz about 2 weeks ago) so that wasn't included in the pics here however i have extensive experience with it so i'm including it in my comparison...relative sizes:

the patrol machete sits in-between the two. like the lite machete, it's longer and have much more forward balance than the junglas but it's closer to the junglas in thickness so it's more capable for batoning/splitting wood unlike the lite machete. my first impression is the patrol machete has the pro's of the other two...alright, time for the outdoors. this spot had various sized dead falls ranging from massive logs to twigs.

sorry, no action shots. i didn't have time last weekend to hike so i went hiking solo mid-week to test them out so no national geographic quality pics from gonadz this time...might as well since it seems like every time i'm holding the lite machete i always look either crazy or pissed off! just check out these two pics from our previous hikes...

with three choppers, i'm not sure anyone wants to see me looking both crazy and pissed off - i'm not mean enough to traumatize someone for life like that...anyway here's the result of about an hour or so of chopping. i really tried to pay attention to each knife's sweet spot, cutting ability, and ergonomics.

the patrol machete's recurve definitely has a steeper learning curve when it comes to consistently hitting the sweet spot compared to the other choppers.

feather sticks - the right side with the patrol machete and the left side with the spyderco bushcraft. it wasn't that bad considering how hard this particular wood was. i ended up spending almost an hour just making a ton of feather sticks with the patrol machete to get a feel for it some more and started the camp fire with just a firesteel and the feather sticks (no cotton ball, fatwood or anything like that). the patrol machete was obviously comfortable enough for me to get the feather sticks thin enough to catch the firesteel's sparks and ignite. if it was my patrol machete though, i'd probably thin out the lower half of the edge (the one closest to the handle) for a better finesse cutter especially since that part isn't used for chopping at all. also, i purposely didn't do any batoning with it since 1. it wasn't my knife, 2. it's currently not being made so even if i knew it could handle it, the off-chance that i damaged it, i had no easy way of replacing it.

time to boil some water for my lunch and think about how the patrol machete performed against my other choppers...moving to part 2.

**JV3** · 03-22-2011, 09:10 PM

now onto the sweet spot for maximum chopping efficiency...it was quite obvious and very easy to consistently hit the sweet spot with the junglas and the lite machete. however, with the patrol machete where i thought was where the sweet spot wasn't always the case.

depending on the chopping angle and thickness of the wood, it felt and reacted very differently when i hit the target with the highlighted areas. it went from biting very deep, to quite a few glancing blows, to sending shocks down to my hand when i missed the proper sweet spot entirely (which was very easy to do compared to my other choppers). the patrol machete reminds me about my gransfors bruks axe - get it right and it bites very deep, but miss the small target and it's almost wasted energy. the junglas & the bk-9 were more "consistent choppers" - by that i mean their sweet spots are much larger and almost every swing resulted in the maximum amount of wood being chopped.

another thing is the thickness and overall weight of the patrol machete. for a jungle/dense vegetation work i'd rather opt for a true (thin & light weight) machete that's more conducive for repeated swings and the proper machete pinch grip. for lighter materials being cut, i found myself using more energy stopping the blade from swinging further after cutting the thin branches/leaves/weed, etc. so i can reposition it for the next cut. with a true machete, all i need is a subtle flick of the wrist back and forth to accomplish the same task.

moving onto the handles...like the machax, the patrol machete's handle has that downward slope of the handle relative to the spine of the knife which keeps the wrist straight as much as possible while chopping which reduces wrist strain during extended use. it also reduces the hot spot that usually occurs near the bottom of the palm on the choppers/knives that have straight handles. if you look closely, the junglas (and the esee-5, esee-6, and spyderco bushcraft) have that downward slope as well.

that downward handle slope reminds me of my angled keyboard...i'm a programmer so i make my living writing thousands of lines of code a year so i've gotten so keen on making everything as easy on my wrists as possible that i actually have two mice (one on each side of my keyboard) to ease the strain. little ergonomic details like that is why i think becker knives along with esee and spyderco are among the top knives out there...super steels are useless without the ergonomics backing it up...sometimes the smallest details counts the most!

moving onto the camillus vs. ka-bar handles...the camillus scales i find has a more squarish shoulder (compared to the ka-bar version) which i like on a knife this thin (compared to the bk-2). one of my few gripes with the bk-9 was that the grip wasn't filling enough in my hand compared to the bk-2 to be comfortable. a more squarish shoulder and thick liners underneath the bk-9's scales would improve it's ergonomics for me and prevented me from selling it but that's for another thread.

edge-holding...switchblade61 sent the patrol machete to me nice and sharp, it definitely cut printer paper cleanly, so i didn't touch it up prior to field testing. however, after i got back from the hike it was quite dull...dull enough that it couldn't even cut paper. we do have some pretty hard woods here but all i did was chop with it and no batoning at all. i'm pretty sure my bk-9's edge held a lot longer than that in far more abuse so i'm happy that becker knives are now made by ka-bar/with tooj's heat treat instead of camillus (albeit it's just one sample here).

sharpening...the recurve poses another issue for me. the circled areas contacts the stones whereas the area highlighted by the red rectangle doesn't at all. this is true for most of the patrol machete's edge (this is a dmt 8"x3" diamond stone for the curious). this is not an issue at all with most knives that have "straight" edges.

i find that a stone that's not wider than 1" works the best to navigate the recurves. an edge pro works as well (not pictured).

a spyderco sharpmaker works as well but due to the recurve i'd probably focus on sharpening 50% of the blade at a time to prevent screwing up the bevel (i'd establish the bevel with an edge pro first to make it easy on myself instead of freehanding it with stones).

in summary, i'd most likely pass on the patrol machete even if it ever comes back to regular production. the handle and overall ergonomics is nice but the weight/thickness is tiring to use where a true machete is used for. as for being a chopper, i find that a bk-9 (or other choppers) with it's straight edge has a much bigger sweet spot for chopping and much easier to maintain. i'd like to see a bk-9 with a downward-sloping handle though to reduce that hot spot...the good news is that the better chopper in my opinion (bk-9) is in production whereas the patrol machete isn't.

once again, i'd like to say thank you very much moose for this passaround!

**Moosez45** · 03-22-2011, 09:25 PM

Absolutely fabulous review. Very, very, very well done. Thanks for the critcism as well, not alot of folks would give their honest opinion, just a "Its great, I'll take #77, thanks for the chance" is all to often seen. Very scientific and well written. Definetly an A+ review.

Moose

**tonym** · 03-22-2011, 09:42 PM

Originally Posted by moosez45

Absolutely fabulous review. Very, very, very well done. Thanks for the critcism as well, not alot of folks would give their honest opinion, just a "Its great, I'll take #77, thanks for the chance" is all to often seen. Very scientific and well written. Definetly an A+ review.

Moose

It is now my turn to agree with MOOSEY!

Great work !!

**TheGame** · 03-22-2011, 10:59 PM

Originally Posted by moosez45

Absolutely fabulous review. Very, very, very well done. Thanks for the critcism as well, not alot of folks would give their honest opinion, just a "Its great, I'll take #77, thanks for the chance" is all to often seen. Very scientific and well written. Definetly an A+ review.

Moose

I'd have to agree with Moose here. Great review!