- Joined
- Jan 21, 2000
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- 8,888
So at sunrise yesterday I was climbing out of my pickup, ready to start digging post holes to install new fence posts on an old fence line around some acreage I bought last year. I suddenly realized I had left my machete tied to an old rolled-up tarp in the forward part of the truck bed, and that it was now lying beneath a stacked load of treated fence posts.
I looked down the old fence row at all the grown-up mesquite, prickly pear cactus, Brazil brush, black brush and huisache--a thorny mess. Now what, I thought. Do I start digging post holes with all that stuff clawing at me, or do I unload the whole damn bed just to get the machete? Then I remembered I had an old Basic #9 beater stuck under the seat of the pickup for emergencies.
I put on my gloves to protect against the thorns, broke out the #9, and literally had a field day knocking down brush and carving away great clumps of cactus with casual strokes. The blade was a little too heavy to do speed cuts on light brush, but its razor edge and weight allowed me to follow springy limbs down to the nearest fork and split them off without delay.
As I worked putting in the fence posts, I forgot I had laid the #9 back under the pickup seat after clearing brush. This afternoon I found it, and although I wiped the blade on my glove before laying it down, my first thought was RUST. I winced. The land where I was working is less than three miles from the salty bay known as the Laguna Madre, on the southern Texas coast. Between the juices from cactus and brush, and the salt sea air, I was shaking my head and expecting the worst.
The worst amounted to a sprinkle of pinhead-size surface spots just ahead of the choil on the flat side of the edge, over a length of about two inches. The rest of that side and the whole convex side of the edge were clean of any signs of rust, and the edge was still sharp enough to scrape hair.
One hell of a knife.
-w
I looked down the old fence row at all the grown-up mesquite, prickly pear cactus, Brazil brush, black brush and huisache--a thorny mess. Now what, I thought. Do I start digging post holes with all that stuff clawing at me, or do I unload the whole damn bed just to get the machete? Then I remembered I had an old Basic #9 beater stuck under the seat of the pickup for emergencies.
I put on my gloves to protect against the thorns, broke out the #9, and literally had a field day knocking down brush and carving away great clumps of cactus with casual strokes. The blade was a little too heavy to do speed cuts on light brush, but its razor edge and weight allowed me to follow springy limbs down to the nearest fork and split them off without delay.
As I worked putting in the fence posts, I forgot I had laid the #9 back under the pickup seat after clearing brush. This afternoon I found it, and although I wiped the blade on my glove before laying it down, my first thought was RUST. I winced. The land where I was working is less than three miles from the salty bay known as the Laguna Madre, on the southern Texas coast. Between the juices from cactus and brush, and the salt sea air, I was shaking my head and expecting the worst.
The worst amounted to a sprinkle of pinhead-size surface spots just ahead of the choil on the flat side of the edge, over a length of about two inches. The rest of that side and the whole convex side of the edge were clean of any signs of rust, and the edge was still sharp enough to scrape hair.
One hell of a knife.
-w
