BK6 Patrol Machete Passaround Signup and Review Thread

Moosez45

Custom Antlers, Factory Knives...
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Link to companion thread: BK6 Patrol Machete Passaround Discussion Thread
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/threads/813086-BK6-Patrol-Machete-Passaround-Discussion-Thread

Ok, since the BK5 passaround is winding down, I will be conducting this one, from my own personal stash. The idea is to get a piece of Becker history in your hands. Sorry, I will be keeping this one once we are finished, but I have an idea to make it interesting and beneficiary to the participants. So, without further adue, I give you the

Becker BK6 Patrol Machete Pay It Forward Passaround

Ok, here's the specifics, we will have 20 participants, and this will span the borders of the countries. Canadians, you will get to be apart of this one, but, to make it easier on the participants, I will be sending it to Canada first, and we will keep it in Canada, until all of our Northern Brothers have had their chance. That way, we only have to cross the border once to get in and once to get out.

Signup requirements are that you must be a Beckerhead, BF status open, and you must state whether you live in the States or Canada.

Your review must include pics and/or a video, and you MUST POST THE REVIEW/PICS/VID IN YOUR SIGNUP POST IN THIS THREAD got that?

You will sign up in this thread, with "I'm In, Beckerhead #(your number here). US/Canada. Then once you get done with the machete, edit your post, and put it there.

Each person will have the BK6 for 7 days, and it will be your responsiblity to ship it to the next person in line, mkay?

Now, the fun part, Pay It Forward. The first person to get the machete, will find something "extra" in there with it. It is theirs to keep. They must then, place something in the package when they send it out, to give to the next person. Try to keep it within reason and don't send useless, stupid things, this is not a "white elephant" game here, these are your Becker Brothers here. Don't get expensive, and don't put anything "new" in there. Basically, something you own, don't go out and buy something, this is a way to share within our community of Beckerheads. Nothing "dangerous". Ok, we will be sending a machete, but don't be putting explosives, or snakes, or other crap, be sensible here and make it good.

You must be 18, and can own a knife. You must make sure you have the funds to ship and recieve, and IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO GET THIS TO THE NEXT PERSON. Remember, this is a personal blade of mine, not something that can be easily replaced. Not saying use the hell out of it, but don't go putting it in a vice, or anything. I understand things happen, lost in the mail, it broke, yada, yada, yada. No worries, just don't intentionally break this machete. Cool?

OK, lets get going, NO CHATTING IN THIS THREAD, START ANOTHER THREAD TO ASK QUESTIONS, AND TALK ABOUT IT

1- Switchblade61
2- JV3
3- gytheran
4- kg4ghn
5- Flexxx
6- wildmanh
7- threatx
8- Mighty1
9- Moosez45

I will place the names on this list, in the order that will be the most beneficial to the shipping and country issues, so just post in this thread, "I'm In, Beckerhead #(your BH# here) US/Canada.

Once everyone is signed up, and we work out some more details, we will get started.

Here she is,

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Let's make this good.

Moose
 
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Alright, my turn!

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Well, we've seen that the BK-6 Patrol Machete CAN do typical woodcraft tasks. My interest was to see how the blade stacked up to my other large knives/cutting tools for the typical tasks I require. My primary use for a large blade is to chop and split firewood. While I wouldn't baton it(not my blade and no longer produced), I was more than happy to test it's chopping ability against the process power of my existing tools.

To start this test, I laid out my utensils.
From left to right: BK-2, BK-9, BK-6, Fiskars X7(just purchased)

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All blades were sufficiently sharp for this test, so no sharpening was required. As you see, of the three knives, the BK-6 is the same thickness of the BK-9, at 3/16". In hand, the BK-6 felt very front heavy, a trait that is good for choppers.

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Using the same log, each tool was swung a total of 20 times and the overall cuts compared.

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As the picture shows, the overall winner was the Fiskars hatchet, followed by the BK-9, then the BK-6, and lastly the BK-2. Honestly, I wouldn't use the BK-2 to chop unless I absolutely had to, but it was thrown into the mix for fun.

As mentioned before, the Patrol Machete has a small sweet spot at the widest part of the blade, which definitely give the blade an interesting learning curve. I'm not sure if it was my technique or the hardness of the wood I was chopping, but the BK-6 loved to not bite in hard and glance to the side, which you can see here:


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At the last minute, I decided to pull out another contender. Originally I was going to test the BK-6 against an imacasa regular machete, but I was beaten to the punch, so I picked up another Imacasa bolo-ish machete, attempted to put on an edge to one side(I say this, as the machete was far from sharp) and performed the same 20 swing cut to somewhat different results.


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Even with the dull edge, this machete wanted to dig right in.

I decided to test the bites of the two machetes on a different log, and got similar results. The BK-6 would hardly dig into the wood and the Imacasa would bit right in.


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Finally, I thought I would give the BK-6 the most important test of all... The wife test!

My wife examined both blades, noting the sharpness of the Becker and the extreme dullness of the Imacasa. She wielded both machetes and tested the bite of each in the same fashion as I did. With the BK-6 she noticed the bite was so shallow she could remove the blade with only her pinky, while with the Imacasa, it required more force to remove the blade.


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Overall, my wife liked the performance of the Imacasa over the Becker, but said she thought the BK-6 looked much better.

So then I tried to sweet talk her into buying some more knives... and didn't quite get the response I was looking for... ugh... maybe some other time!


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So! After all the playing with the machete was over, what won out to be used to process the tree for firewood?


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My Corona Saw! Sorry guys. As much as I like chopping wood with a knife, the saw is faster, more efficient, less work, and wastes less wood. However, I did baton my x7 to split most of these logs and found it does a rather impressive job splitting.

We both noticed with the weight ratio, the BK-6 was slightly unwieldy and felt like it wanted to fly out of our hands. I'm sure the BK-6 would do a fine job at clearing live brush, but I had none to test it on. Overall, I would have to say I wouldn't have a use for the Patrol Machete. Thank you Moose for the opportunity to handle this blade. :)

~Joe
 
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Alrighty then, since we only have 8 people signed up, I am going to extend the time with the machete to 2 weeks. I will be shipping this out Friday of next week to Switchblade61, once you get it, make a post to let me know you got it, use it, then make your post about it.

Ya'll need to get in contact with the name below yours, when the time comes to ship it out. Rock on ya'll.

Next passaround will be the BK2

Moose
 
I wanted to see if gytheran would like to trade me places, me and wildmanh live in utah.

I could just send it right to him without it leaving the state....
 
I wanted to see if gytheran would like to trade me places, me and wildmanh live in utah.

I could just send it right to him without it leaving the state....

Taken care of, thanks.

Moose
 
Finally I had a chance to get out and give a little workout to this Bk-6. The blade came to me fairly sharp, with some minor chippings. I touched it up with a sharpening steel previously.

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First I chopped up some green twigs, one chop/one piece. Piece of cake...

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For warm up I chopped a piece of (about 3" diameter) dead alder. Got through in no time.

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Then I decided to use the Patrol Machete as a draw knife.

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The little curve in the blade proved to be an advantage for this purpose and the length of the blade made it easy to grab and draw. The BK-6 produced nice, thin shavings with little effort.

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More to come...
 
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After that I did a little cross-grain batoning in order to make a notch in the log.

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I used the machete as a draw-knife to clear the notch.

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Here's an even larger diameter alder log chopped through and you can see how clean this blade chops.

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Here you can see the two pieces of the log separated.

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More to follow...
 
Some more "one chop-one piece" exercise. Notice the clean, one swing cuts...

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For my next task, I put a quick point on a piece of wood with a few light chops.

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Then, I decided to try the Patrol Machete at some more detailed work, like feather-stick making...

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...and tent/tarp stake carving...

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The stake cleaned up a bit more...

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...and some more feather-stick from green wood this time.

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More to come...
 
Using my "draw-knife" again, I made a small, flat "workbench" at the end of the previously chopped alder log.

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Then some more feather-sticks...

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This large blade is surprisingly good at this...

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Here's the little travel companion of the BK-6... (Thanks Moose!)

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Look at the depth of this one, light swing... That's quite the bite...

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One more shot of the "battlefield"... Alders were slain, dismembered and the Patrol Machete had victory and total control...

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I think this blade is pretty good, useful tool in the woods. If one gets to know the sweet spot, it does chop effortlessly and pretty much without felt vibration in the hand. It is light, but still a serious chopper and I think it does well for more detailed work.
So, there you have it.
I still have some time to have this BK-6 and might be able to do some more work and testing later.
Thanks for reading!
 
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wow

THAT WAS AWESOME!!!! YEAH!!!!

Great, great, great post. I love it, really love it. So, how do you like it? :D

Moose
 
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