I ran this guy through the paces this weekend. I did my usual test of batoning through fire wood, then chopping at it, then batoning some more, repeat. The handle felt as solid and sturdy as a rock and showed no signs of loosening or cracking. It chopped just like you'd expect a jungle knife to, meaning it cuts deep but binds and doesn't chip wood out like an axe. It's great for splitting firewood, though. It only took a couple whacks to split a piece.
Then I recalled a video I saw of someone pounding the tip of a full tang thai e-nep through a dead tree like a nail using a big rock as a hammer. It seemed like a good way break a hidden tang knife. I didn't have a big rock handy so I used another piece of firewood as the hammer. I only got about half way through a piece of firewood before it just wouldn't go any deeper. The fact that I couldn't pound it all the way through like in the video was probably due more to the hardness of the firewood and lack of a good pounding rock rather than the quality of the blade or handle. It took awhile to pry and bang it back loose again, but both the handle and tip of the blade were totally undamaged. The blade flexed a little when I was prying it out of the firewood but it didn't permanently bend or deform.
I also used the knife to carve a comfortable handle for my firewood hammer. It was comfortable and easy to control, and sliced through the wood very easily. I'm going to thin the edge out a bit towards the handle, but even with the factory edge it performed more than satisfactorily.
Lastly I did some "head to head" comparisons between this and my KLVUK because in my mind they were both roughly the same dimensions. After setting them side by side, though, the KLVUK is significantly longer and wider, and probably 4 times thicker. So comparing them is apples and oranges, but I did it anyway.
Obviously the KLVUK was a much better chopper. And obviously the lighter parang was a little easier to use for wood carving tasks but not by much. For splitting firewood the parang was much more effective than the thicker KLVUK, no surprise their either. The blades on both are differentially hardened spring steel, so both are virtually indestructible. The wooden handle on the KLVUK was more shock absorbent than the micarta on the parang. The KLVUK is easily the more capable blade if you're willing to carry the weight, but the parang will get the job done too.
I'm going to thin the handle out a bit more towards the end and put a final finish on it. The handle looked grimy when I was finished with it, so I'm going to try sealing it with superglue rather than oil. If I don't like the results I'll just sand it off.
