Heavy garden work

Gadzooks. More info please. What are you planning on chopping? Down hanging branches, or soft grasses? Sugar cane, or elm sapplings? Camp wood for the fire pit? Removing raspberry bushes? Different blades and lengths for different tasks. Straight traditional blades such as the South American designs do best on vines and canes, broader blade tips do better on soft woods. Very few machete types do well on hard woods. Blade thickness effects cutting. 1090 seems to be better than 1095. Stainless steel blades have a reputation for shattering on chopping harder woods. Some 1095 steel blades when over tempered are known to shatter like china plate, but others, properly tempered for chopping, go on for years. Some blades have gut hooks on the back to help with vines, some have double edges for specialized cutting circumstances, others have flat spines for snapping branches off. Some have saw teeth on the back. Some brands teeth actually can saw, others put them there solely as a sales gimmick and you are better off filing the teeth off as they will cut nothing but you. Handle size is important as is handle shape and material. Too small and the blade can leave your hand. A perfect blade with a lousy handle can leave your hand numb or bleeding. A perfect handle with the wrong blade for the task will tire you out very quickly and lead to missed cuts or broken blades. Is the overall length too short, or too long? Hand guard and lanyard loop, or not? Pros and cons both ways. Do you have a sheath or will you carry it in your hand when talking to the mailman? Blade length should also be matched to the task. Many of the worse designs are over priced. Some of the time proven best designs are very modestly priced. Some of the most known types actually perform very poorly with hard usage. There is a wealth of reading material on this and other sites (some destruction tests too) which should be read. Suffice to say no available design I have seen is perfect for all machete tasks.
 
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Check out the Woodsman's Pal. I've not used one but my father-in-law has the premium model with a leather grip & handguard that he absolutely swears by.
http://www.woodmanspal.com/

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That is a very good design, but way too short for many tasks. Noted that it is available both with and without the guard. Wood/plastic handled as well as older leather handled versions are available. Which sheath you get depends on which version you get.
 
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