Coghlan's machete, is it as crappy as I thought it is?

J

jzmtl

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Jul 29, 2007
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So I bought one a year ago before I actually knew anything about knives. Now I look at it, wow, what a piece of crap. Looks like a piece of stamped out carbon steel with two empty plastic clamshell handle screwed on, blade is really thin, maybe 1/8", or 3/16" at most, there is no edge, and hard as hell to sharpen. I ended up using angle grinder with sanding disk to put an okay edge on it.

So is it really as crappy as I think it is? What should I do with it, seems it's 18" length is bending under its own weight, I really don't know how well it can take a whack. Should I just throw it in the basement and never touch it again, or can I make something useful out of it, like a shorter machete or something.
 
Well, if it is very thin and very hard, I'd recommend cutting the blade down to something like a knife instead of a machete, and doing a new handle.
A very thin and hard machete sounds like a breakage in the making, and I think such steel would be better suited as a type of small fixed blade. Even a thick paracord wrapping would be superior to hollow plastic handles of unknown quality.
 
It doesn't seem to be hard per se, just a pain to hand sharpen for some reason (angle grinder took care of it easy), and bends pretty easy. I just remeasured it and it is only 1/16" thick, pretty (too?) thin for machete eh?

I'm thinking maybe I can cut it down to 12" of blade or so, and make a clip/tanto point knife or something. Maybe being shorter will mean being stronger.
 
Some of the guys have made several smaller knives out of one cheap machete and been pleased with the results. It's a cheap way to get some steel that's already been heat-treated. Machetes are usually tempered softer than smaller knives and edge-holding may not be great, but hey, you're going to have to sharpen any knife sooner or later.... :)

I guess I should move this thread.
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Almost every machete on the market at least looks like a piece of crap. In my book, a machete has to be made from a stamped piece of steel, usually 1/8" thick or less. If it falls out of those simple parameters, it's less a machete and more of a different kind of big knife, perhaps a golok, or bolo, or bowie, etc.

Even though most machetes are cheap, some are quite useful and very tough. However, some really are just cheap. I have several different machetes from several different manufacturers. As noted, they're generally softer than a quality knife, but often tempered to be tough. The best ones seem to be tempered more like springs than knives.

Out of the lot, I do have one crappy one. A $3 Harbor Freight machete, seemingly unhardened and annealed rather than tempered. I can easily bend the blade with my hands 90 degrees and have it set there. A decent machete costing ony a few bucks more is much harder to bend by hand, and if bent, will return reasonably true. I have no experience with Coghlans stuff, but from what I've seen, it tends to be crappy. I would not be surprised to find their machete on the crap list.
 
My friend bought one of these about a year ago. After 1 day of chopping, he managed to bend the blade and crack off parts of the handle. I finally convinced him to just buy an Ontario, and he has been much happier with it. Doesn't cost that much more, and so far (he's only had it for about a week) looks like it's worth the extra investment.
 
jzmtl said:
So I bought one a year ago before I actually knew anything about knives. Now I look at it, wow, what a piece of crap. Looks like a piece of stamped out carbon steel with two empty plastic clamshell handle screwed on, blade is really thin, maybe 1/8", or 3/16" at most, there is no edge, and hard as hell to sharpen. I ended up using angle grinder with sanding disk to put an okay edge on it. ...
Click to expand...

Well, you just described most of the machetes made and used by common folks all over the world. The vast majority of them are simple, inexpensive, almost crude tools that people use to get their mundane, everyday jobs done with. Nearly all of them come with an edge that needs a lot of work at first before it can cut much, and most of them have plastic or wood handle scales that are far from fancy and are held on most often by fairly crude rivets. The good part of all this is that machetes (and some other knives) are still good, effective, useful tools even if they are dirt simple and don't cost much.

If you're not happy with your machete, it might be a good starting point for you to turn it into something you might be proud of. I think the obvious place to start would be to make a better handle, maybe out of whatever nice hardwood is easily available to you. Then, since your blade is now 18 inches long, you obviously could shorten it some. For any serious land clearing or trail cutting I think a blade that's 18 to 22 inches long gets the job done with less work, but a 12 inch machete is one of the handiest outdoors tools you can own for less arduous, more generalized tasks. In the past I've shortened two full size machetes down to shorter sizes, one to 12 inches and one to 10 I think. The 10 was reshaped into a clip point "Bowie" shape. Both of them worked out well, even with their original handles. Machetes are cheap enough that you can afford to have fun with them, and then buy another sometime if you choose to.
 
A Tramontina from Brazil (check out Smoky Mountain for them in the US) will cost you $6 and is a very fine tool. They are sort of the Mora of the machete industry.
 
The thickness is what concerns me the most. I grossly over estimated it in original post, it's only 1/16" thick. Seems for a 18" chopper it's a bit on the thin side. If it was 1/8" I'd leave it alone.

Right now my plan is to shorten it to 12", since where I live there isn't much use for a machete, it's either trees or short grass, a hatchet would work better. I think I'll do a spear point thou, because the steel seems to thin to hold up the sharp point of bowie. Tried to do a kopis but there isn't enough belly to do a proper shape.

The only concern is my only cutting tool is an angle grinder, which I don't know if it would destroy steel temper/heat treatment while cutting.
 
jzmtl said:
The thickness is what concerns me the most. I grossly over estimated it in original post, it's only 1/16" thick. Seems for a 18" chopper it's a bit on the thin side. If it was 1/8" I'd leave it alone.

Right now my plan is to shorten it to 12", since where I live there isn't much use for a machete, it's either trees or short grass, a hatchet would work better. I think I'll do a spear point thou, because the steel seems to thin to hold up the sharp point of bowie. Tried to do a kopis but there isn't enough belly to do a proper shape.

The only concern is my only cutting tool is an angle grinder, which I don't know if it would destroy steel temper/heat treatment while cutting.
Click to expand...

The reason that it's so thin is because machetes are intended to be used on springy green thin vegetation (thin branches, shrubs, foliage) and if it were twice as thick, it would be twice as heavy, and you would get tired much faster. Also, thinner blades move faster, and cut better. It's not intended to be used on trees, but if you put a good edge on it and new handle scales, it would probably work just fine for what it was designed for.
 
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