The advantages of the machete for post-apocalyptic melee weapons prepping are many. Machetes are light, fast, and cheap, so many can be stored for the price of even the cheapest swords. I recently brought from EBay, some 24-inch bladed Latin machetes for about $ 3 each. A really rough presentation, with cheap soft wood handles. But, I put some PVC tape over the wood, and they were good to go, and I put them through a torture test, and they performed fine.

I need machetes for clearing blackberries and other woody weeds in the valley and hillsides of the farm, areas laden with rocks and wire, which really fuck up whipper snipers. Also, the mechanical cutters are somewhat dangerous on steep slippery slopes, so the machete is king there. If the blade of the machete is not too sharp, it just bangs on the wire, you pull the wire out, and off you go. What are a few chips here and there between friends?

Poisoning the blackberry does not work, and in any case, I am concerned about the health issues with sprays, when such big areas need to be done: just read Natural.News.com. Given that the dried blackberry underneath is a fire hazard, the blackberries need to be cleared each year. Further, socialist local councils fine you if you do not slave away at this.

Every year that I do this I come to curse the lightness of the machete blade, especially after 8 hours of full power strikes, which really fuck up aging rotor cuff muscles, a pathetic design flaw in the human primate.

Why the fuck are the blades only generally 2 mm thick, although some of Cold Steel’s machetes are 2.8 mm, such as its Chinese sword machete? Where did this cult of lightness come from, given that Southeast Asian blades are much thicker?

Cold Steel’s heavy machete, which I hoped to be about 6 mm thick, comes in at only 2 mm., which is way too light for a “heavy” machete. These blades are very good for most work, and would, if kept super sharp, be excellent for self-defense, but having used all of these machetes, only the Chinese sword machete meets my needs in land clearing. In passing, I own a Cold Steel Latin machete, which I got when they first can out. It has been used, sharpened and ground down that now it resembles a slim knife. I retired it, giving it to my daughter as a weapon to protect her virtues.

Ideally, the machete should double up as a tool and a weapon. It has the advantage over swords, of being readily used, hence one knows that the blade is unlikely to break. Who knows what will happen under stress with that expensive katana you just brought? There was a story in a local knife magazine back around 2005 about some dude who went on a sacred mission to Japan to buy a katana from a master swordsmith: cost, $ 20,000. He took it to a cutting demonstration, tameshigiri, and first cut, the sword broke in two, close to the hilt. There is shit on your pale face.

I read a recent article by a local sword maker/metallurgist, who had analysed the steel of a number of commercial swords, and found the quality poor, full of slag intrusions, no names mentioned. The swords could break under the stress of neo-Medieval barbarian combat in the coming post-apocalyptic wastelands.

My solution has been to buy slices of 6 mm thick spring steel flat bar, grind out a basic blade, get it heat treated, or sometimes not even bother, make a handle from PVC tape, and off you go. Kept even moderately sharp, they will slice through most biological obstacles placed in front of you. And, the steel is relatively cheap. Sometimes the factory here, which makes truck springs etc., has bits in the bin that can be had for less than the price of a burger.

I believe that is how god wanted things to be in the beginning when he made the universe with His cosmic machete; each man with his thick machete, a loyal companion, able to seriously fuck up anything which pissed him off.

This is an important topic, well deserving the LaFondian treatment, but other badasses, I am sure, have their own point of view to add.

The basics:

These Hispanic (?) guys are not bad:

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