- Joined
- Apr 28, 2012
- Messages
- 30
I had a chance to take the Machax out and do some work with it. I wanted to see what it is capable of and what its/my limits are in playing with these things. My first task was I decided to walk over to the brushpile and find a good branch to chop on. I picked out this 4" or so oak because it was already off the ground and held on both ends making it easy to chop and I didn't have to move a lot of brush to get to this section.
After having selected the victim, I proceeded to use my years of woods experience and knowledge to make carefully selected cuts...
Actually I just started wailing on it like an idiot who just found a copperhead at his feet. I did make some attempts to alternate the direction (left/right) to make a v-cut. Despite my utter lack of skill in chopping with a knife (and not much more with a hatchet), after 40 hits, I had this:
At this point, I realized I had screwed up in choosing my victim. I wanted to rotate the limb to come at it from the other side; but unfortunately the bend of the limb I picked and the rest of the brushpile didn't allow that without moving a lot of wood. So I decided to do it the hard way and just keep on chopping all the way through until the V was deep enough to break it. After 100 hits (give or take) I had this:
During this process, I noticed a few problems. One is that due to my poor technique, I tended to have bad chops. Instead of hitting the limb with the belly of just behind the belly where the sweet spot for power chopping is, I kept hitting just the tip of the blade against the limb. The result was a lot of wear on the tip of the blade and worse chopping than I should have seen. I think with better technique and rotating the limb to do V=cuts on both sides, I probably could have been through it in aaround 60-70 hits. The second problem was I had made myself a long lanyard with a sliding cordlock to adjust the usable lanyard length and a cordlock/whistle on the end. My thinking was that I wanted to have a little extra cordage in the lanyard that I could use if I needed to. However, the spare cordage and extra cordlock was swinging all around and awkward in actual use. While having extra cordage is nice, I think I'll end up shortening this up some. The final problem was that I raised a blister on the inside base of my pinky. Again, the wailing away like an idiot didn't help here; but now I'm curious if the smoother grivory would have served me better. I like the feel of the micarta - it feels more secure in my grip; but I am thinking the extra friction comes with a price.
Here is a picture of the tip of the blade after I finished chopping. When I started it was mirror-smooth.... the tip took the brunt of the damage due to my sloppy technique. The belly and remainder of the blade still look good and is quite sharp; but the tip is going to need some sharpening work before it will be doing any paper slicing.
Finally, after cuting the limb in half, I rotated a big L-shaped section and decided to try with-grain batoning and cross-grain batoning. I chopped off another 3/4" limb to be my baton and went to work. The with-grain batoning was ridiculously easy... it took about 4 hits to get this far.
I pulled out the Machax after this picture and tried cross-grain batoning. That went nowhere fast... the baton just didn't have enough mass to make any progress on the oak. I didn't get the blade deep enough to even stick it in the limb. I think the Machax is probably capable; but I lack the knowledge of the proper technique to make it work and needed a bigger baton.
I imagine a lot of this is probably old news to several of the posters here; but I thought I would share my experience in case someone else new came along. All in all, I'm very pleased with the Machax. It exceeded my expectations on both batoning and chopping and was a very usable tool.
After having selected the victim, I proceeded to use my years of woods experience and knowledge to make carefully selected cuts...
Actually I just started wailing on it like an idiot who just found a copperhead at his feet. I did make some attempts to alternate the direction (left/right) to make a v-cut. Despite my utter lack of skill in chopping with a knife (and not much more with a hatchet), after 40 hits, I had this:
At this point, I realized I had screwed up in choosing my victim. I wanted to rotate the limb to come at it from the other side; but unfortunately the bend of the limb I picked and the rest of the brushpile didn't allow that without moving a lot of wood. So I decided to do it the hard way and just keep on chopping all the way through until the V was deep enough to break it. After 100 hits (give or take) I had this:
During this process, I noticed a few problems. One is that due to my poor technique, I tended to have bad chops. Instead of hitting the limb with the belly of just behind the belly where the sweet spot for power chopping is, I kept hitting just the tip of the blade against the limb. The result was a lot of wear on the tip of the blade and worse chopping than I should have seen. I think with better technique and rotating the limb to do V=cuts on both sides, I probably could have been through it in aaround 60-70 hits. The second problem was I had made myself a long lanyard with a sliding cordlock to adjust the usable lanyard length and a cordlock/whistle on the end. My thinking was that I wanted to have a little extra cordage in the lanyard that I could use if I needed to. However, the spare cordage and extra cordlock was swinging all around and awkward in actual use. While having extra cordage is nice, I think I'll end up shortening this up some. The final problem was that I raised a blister on the inside base of my pinky. Again, the wailing away like an idiot didn't help here; but now I'm curious if the smoother grivory would have served me better. I like the feel of the micarta - it feels more secure in my grip; but I am thinking the extra friction comes with a price.
Here is a picture of the tip of the blade after I finished chopping. When I started it was mirror-smooth.... the tip took the brunt of the damage due to my sloppy technique. The belly and remainder of the blade still look good and is quite sharp; but the tip is going to need some sharpening work before it will be doing any paper slicing.
Finally, after cuting the limb in half, I rotated a big L-shaped section and decided to try with-grain batoning and cross-grain batoning. I chopped off another 3/4" limb to be my baton and went to work. The with-grain batoning was ridiculously easy... it took about 4 hits to get this far.
I pulled out the Machax after this picture and tried cross-grain batoning. That went nowhere fast... the baton just didn't have enough mass to make any progress on the oak. I didn't get the blade deep enough to even stick it in the limb. I think the Machax is probably capable; but I lack the knowledge of the proper technique to make it work and needed a bigger baton.
I imagine a lot of this is probably old news to several of the posters here; but I thought I would share my experience in case someone else new came along. All in all, I'm very pleased with the Machax. It exceeded my expectations on both batoning and chopping and was a very usable tool.
