tramontina machetes

The latest cold steel machete i purchased didn't need the multiple hours of edge work the earlier purchases i made from them required. So they may be a viable out of the box machete now.
 
I've owned a few Tramontinas & my friend bought a Cold Steel machete online & has used it & let me handle it. The Tramontinas are well worth the price. Sturdy beaters with good blades. The handles rattle a bit after a while so the Cold Steel edges them out in my opinion, given their low price & better handles. I think they'll last longer for double the price.

Having said that, I've owned a few different models of cheap machetes & the Tramontina was a ton better than a lot of junk I paid a bit more for. Anyone remember that plastic handled black thing from Wal-Mart's sporting goods department? & the Tramontinas are more readily available locally.

I'd go crazy on my Tramontinas in my dad's shed, spraying lacquer on the blades, electric taping the handles, injecting various glues into the handle to tighten them up, ect. When they give out you buy another at the local shop for almost nothing. They're solid, guilt-free work tools.
 
jeffphansen77 said:
I've owned a few Tramontinas & my friend bought a Cold Steel machete online & has used it & let me handle it. The Tramontinas are well worth the price. Sturdy beaters with good blades. The handles rattle a bit after a while so the Cold Steel edges them out in my opinion, given their low price & better handles. I think they'll last longer for double the price.

Having said that, I've owned a few different models of cheap machetes & the Tramontina was a ton better than a lot of junk I paid a bit more for. Anyone remember that plastic handled black thing from Wal-Mart's sporting goods department? & the Tramontinas are more readily available locally.

I'd go crazy on my Tramontinas in my dad's shed, spraying lacquer on the blades, electric taping the handles, injecting various glues into the handle to tighten them up, ect. When they give out you buy another at the local shop for almost nothing. They're solid, guilt-free work tools.
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wasnt that {thing} in wal mart a coleman?
 
I've got three of em at the moment. The edge they come with is uneven and is not sharp-though you can get it shaving with an arkansas stone in about 45 minutes. It holds a decent edge if you leave it flat ground, and boy does it slice and bite deep. The handles are much more comfortable than Cold Steel's machetes. The stock is thinner.
 
seniormcblade said:
wasnt that {thing} in wal mart a coleman?
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Yes,sir. I'm afraid so. I was in awe of it. The hollow, flimsy plastic handles, that buttery stuff being used as blade material...it blew my mind. And this marvel only cost mabe five dollars more than the Tramontinas. It was like an M-Tech folder only costing you twenty dollars more than the high end Benchmades you're used to buying.
 
Mine work well for low brush and opening coconuts. I sharpen with a file and a steel since mine are always hitting the dirt somewhere.
 
Local flea market "tool guy" sells Trams for $5:50 for 12", $6:50 for 14", $7:50 for 18", tax included.;);)
 
jeffphansen77 said:
Yes,sir. I'm afraid so. I was in awe of it. The hollow, flimsy plastic handles, that buttery stuff being used as blade material...it blew my mind. And this marvel only cost mabe five dollars more than the Tramontinas. It was like an M-Tech folder only costing you twenty dollars more than the high end Benchmades you're used to buying.
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:D:thumbup::D:thumbup::D:thumbup:
 
Tramontinas are good. I like them better than the Ontarios, because they're lighter. Light is good in a tool that you may be swinging all day. My one problem with the longer Tramontinas is that they aren't tapered, so they have a "floppy", dead feel to them. They are tip heavy, and not very well balanced. A really good machete will be tapered, and have a springy, lively feel in the hand. The only current production machetes I've seen that are still tapered are Imacasas and Condors. There may be others though.
 
I bought several 12" Tromontinas from SMKW for gifts and my own use,$6.00 ea,
They came working sharp with nice grinds,well fitting wood that is comfortable from the start for me.
No complaints.
SMKW also had very nice sturdy,rigid,reinforced nylon sheaths that were of unbelievably good quality for about the same price.:thumbup:
 
I have been to Brasil 5 times. Each time I have brought back Tramontina machetes for my vehicle emergency kits, clearing brush and gifts to friends. This is a working man's tool! It costs about $3 in Brasil. Sugar cane workers use this tool all day long. It is sharpened and resharpend (takes a nice edge) until there is nothing left. $3 to us in not much, but to a laborer in Brasilian sugar cane fields it is an investment. This is not a high end piece, but it is a very effective tool and quite intimidating (and lethal).
 
I have tram machetes in several sizes and love the things

Luckily for me they dont come with a sheath...:)
 
I love my tramontina. I've been using a 24" for many years, and have a backup waiting to replace it when it's done. Nowhere around here sells them any more, so when I saw one for sale, I jumped on it. Now you can get everything on the internet, so no big deal. I'd really like to try out the cold steel 24, and some really nice looking ones from Imacasa that I've seen pictures of, but I probably won't because my Tramontina gets me by quite well. I've used a lot of machetes before. My tramontina beats the hell out of any of that corona crap they sell at the hardware stores (though I do like Corona's folding pruning saw). I worked on a farm that had these big heavy machetes with triangle-shaped tips, and those things sucked big time. I once had machete with a 27" blade that was bulbous at the tip. That was long ago, but I seem to remember that thing kicking some ass, but it was stolen very soon after I acquired it, and I've never seen one like it since. Other than that one, I've never tried anything that comes close to the capabilities of my Tramontina 24". People are amazed at what I can do with it, and I'm amazed at how cheap they are.

I've resharpened it so many times that I had to check my spare to see what the original edge is like. It's a single bevel that's about 1/4 inch wide. The grind is straight and you can see the marks from the wheel or whatever, so it's not a smooth finish. The bevels on each side don't always meet in the middle, but it's close. You could cut stuff with it, but don't expect a great factory edge on a $6 machete. The metal is pretty thin and tapers slightly. I measured about 1.5mm near the handle and just a hair over 1mm by the tip. It's got a good spring to it.

I keep mine oiled with mineral oil. Sometimes I forget to clean it after cutting stuff that's got moisture in it, and it gets a bit rusty. I scrub it with the scrubby side of a regular sponge with some dishsoap and it cleans up pretty well, though it's got some blackish stains on it.

I used to sharpen mine primarily with a $5 scraper thing with the crossed metal things and crossed ceramic things. I recommend avoiding the crossed metal side, as they tend to catch and rip chunks off the edges of some of my knives. You can also get a single-metal scraper with a handle, that's advertised as being for clippers. The scraper is a hardened square piece of metal welded onto a handle, that you just scrape the corner along the edge of whatever you're sharpening. It's great for clippers and a shovel blades and I've used it on the machete too, but you've just got to be careful about building up a bur on the other side, or careful to get the previous bur off on the last stroke without putting a new one on the other side. It can be tricky. The last time I tried to use my crossed ceramic sharpener, it kept putting a bur on one side and I couldn't make it stop, so I said F' this and went for my new diamond files. I'm really liking these diamond files btw (Chef's choice diamond sharpener file set with three files). I strongly recommend against using a mill bastard or coarse anything on these unless you want to totally reshape the bevel, and I don't know why you'd want to do that. Coarse files are for taking off a lot of metal to reshape an edge, not for sharpening. I only used the coarse or medium one on the end of the tip, where the bevel ends, for some reason (doesn't any more), and the tip was blunt. I used the fine file for most of it, but then I'd already resharpened that machete so many times, so I might have used the medium grit one first if I was putting an edge on a new machete. After that it goes to the strop.

I recently built a few large leather strops, but I can't figure out how to use them. Everything I try to sharpen on them gets dull instead, maybe because I'm pushing too hard and the leather curls up around the blade and dulls it. I tried going really lightly, but then it just doesn't do anything at all except waste my time. My preferred technique currently is to get some card-stock or piece of a file folder and tape it to the counter top, rub the green extra fine compound all over it, scrape off the thick clumps of compound with another knife, and then strop on that. I can push as hard as I want because there's nowhere for it to give, and it takes off metal real well. That makes the paper into basically a 20,000 grit sharpening stone. It polishes up the edge real nicely. I still haven't figured out how to sharpen a knife enough to shave my face with, but the arm hair comes off fairly well. Facial hair is much thicker and tougher. I can scrape bits off of my facial hair, but you couldn't call it shaving. One of these days I hope to get my cutting tools sharp enough to shave with, but for now they still work pretty well at the arm-shaving level of sharpness.
 
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The funny thing about machetes is that some of the very best ones can come out of the box with rather rudimentary edges. The thing is a) machetes really only need a rudimentary edge to keep on truckin' (although I keep mine sharp), and b) machete sharpening, IMHO is whole different mindset than knife sharpening. You get yourself a file and you get you an edge on there right quick, not worrying much or at all about a burr, and get to chopping. My dad, who I never saw swinging an axe, used his (now mine) army surplus Collins with the factory edge for probably two or three years without doing much to that edge (that I recall). Once I learned how to use a file (at about 10) I kept it sharp for him but even then, it was just a few times a year really.

So IMO it is not wise to judge a machete by the factory edge. Look for a nice distal taper, flexibility without wobble, and that nice "ping" you get when you strike the blade with your knuckle.

Tramontina, Condor, Imacasa are the current line-up of the best.
 
HoosierQ said:
So IMO it is not wise to judge a machete by the factory edge. Look for a nice distal taper, flexibility without wobble, and that nice "ping" you get when you strike the blade with your knuckle.

Tramontina, Condor, Imacasa are the current line-up of the best.
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Yup! The "factory edge" on most machetes is what I like to call a "courtesy grind." It's not really intended as an edge so much as a little stock removal to hasten the sharpening process for the end user. I keep mine sharp enough to push-cut paper with a 30-degree included angle to the edge (15 per side.) :D
 
In Brazil there are several quality machetes such as Tramontina, Bianchi, Corneta and Cimo are some examples.
Tramontina machetes have good price and quality, many models lack finishing details but the tool itself is strong and reliable.

The absence of sharp at the end of the blade has a reason, heavy and varied work, having a edge to care would limit the variety of things I can do, a sturdy and blind tip allows me to dig, break stones, handle fires, break hot wood , and work without care with the top of the blade, which most of time is the one who suffers unexpected impacts.
I always prefer to keep the best sharpening closer to the handle for more delicate work, medium sharp on the half and less sharpening at the top for heavier work, obviously I am referring to a work tool and not a weapon, for defense it is better to have a separate and kept machete, always clean and sharp ready for action.
 
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