Ten days ago my machete snapped clean in half trying to cut through a fallen tree trunk on a jungle trail.
The week before, Paddy broke two others. He bent the blade of the first one chopping through some branches on the logging track which were blocking the car. He went above and beyond that with the second, not only bending the blade, but managing to leave fat indents in it too.
What do all these machetes have in common?
Apart from that they were being wielded by oafs when they broke is the fact that they were all from the same hardware shop in Lahad Datu, the nearest town to our jungle base in Danum Valley. And they were bought for 35 Malaysian Ringgits, which at the current conversion rate corresponds to about £6.65 per machete.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a bargain. But when buying an item that could literally gore someone if the blade flies out the handle, and when using that item every day, it might be worth getting something that’s sure to be sturdy.
The real problem with the machetes we’ve been using is this. The entire blade is fixed to the plastic handle by only a very narrow strip of poor quality steel. And it’s attached with superglue.
So, after a couple of minutes of hacking through some of the harder woods you encounter in the forest, the blade starts to loosen in the grip. The result is a nerve-racking tremor with every swing.
Really what we need are machetes with wooden handles, where the blade is either bolted to the handle with rivets or else where the machete blade slots securely into a grip which has been carved internally to provide proper support.
Fortunately, we’ve managed to get our hands on some custom-built machetes from a guy who makes them in his spare time. These are made of proper steel, with the blade having been forged from old chainsaw blades.
I forget the type of wood the handle is made from but apparently it’s used to build houses and so is leagues sturdier than the plastic handles we were using before (I’ll find out the type of wood in the next few days and add it to the blog post).
And, on top of that, because the guy who made the machetes lives locally, he’s happy to carry out any minor repairs needed in the future free-of-charge. In other words, we’ve got jungle insurance! This could prove very useful given the dozens of kilometres of trail we have to cut over the next month.
Check out my new machete below (it’s probably best my face isn’t in the video because I strongly recall that I was grinning like a goon–I mean just look at the scabbard)!
***UPDATE: The wood is called Kayu Malam in Malay, which means “night wood”. Pretty ninja, ey?
RELATED ARTICLES:
One Comment