Sam Cade
Member
Meanwhile, back in the workshop of Horrors:
Early this spring I was given a Fiskars 22" machete.
It was a mixture of good and bad features.
The grip was a two layer cast piece, oddly proportioned with an equilateral upper guard that would wreck the index finger if used for "grassing" without gloves. The blade is slotted into the grip and the tang is completely hidden.
The blade itself is roughly 2mm thick, very flexible and extremely well heat treated but possessing a bizarre hollow grind behind a very thick bevel.
This example had been unsuccessfully "sharpened" with a... wait for it... wait for it...
Dremel tool :banghead: by the previous owner.
After salvaging the edge with a short convex I put the girl to work and rapidly found that most cuts with resistance would produce a terrible shiver in the blade. Little of it made it to the hand because of the absorbent nature of the grip but I could feel the energy of the cut being wasted in vibration.
Shorter=Stiffer so I lopped the blade off just under the...hanging hole?
...and be damned if it didn't work.
Over the last few months I've used the chopped fiskars quite a bit and after breaking down the corners of the guard it has served quite well....
Until the compression rivets that held the grip to the tang started to loosen.
So, back onto the machete pile it went.
Today I fixed it.
Drilled the rivets and was pleased to find that the tang full length, with two holes instead of the half length, hole-and-slot of the Gerber Gator.
(I had pictures of the assembly phase but my memory stick crapped out on my. Sorry guys.)
After prepping the tang and putting some short bolts through the rivet holes I laid up a composite grip with 3M 20122 resin and denim, over a layer of yellow thin cotton fabric.
It came out extremely well I think.
The grind on the grip is about 95% finished here.
I'll probably push the convex up a bit tomorrow.
Maybe take the flats down to 800 grit.
Early this spring I was given a Fiskars 22" machete.
It was a mixture of good and bad features.
The grip was a two layer cast piece, oddly proportioned with an equilateral upper guard that would wreck the index finger if used for "grassing" without gloves. The blade is slotted into the grip and the tang is completely hidden.
The blade itself is roughly 2mm thick, very flexible and extremely well heat treated but possessing a bizarre hollow grind behind a very thick bevel.
This example had been unsuccessfully "sharpened" with a... wait for it... wait for it...
Dremel tool :banghead: by the previous owner.
After salvaging the edge with a short convex I put the girl to work and rapidly found that most cuts with resistance would produce a terrible shiver in the blade. Little of it made it to the hand because of the absorbent nature of the grip but I could feel the energy of the cut being wasted in vibration.
Shorter=Stiffer so I lopped the blade off just under the...hanging hole?
...and be damned if it didn't work.
Over the last few months I've used the chopped fiskars quite a bit and after breaking down the corners of the guard it has served quite well....
Until the compression rivets that held the grip to the tang started to loosen.
So, back onto the machete pile it went.
Today I fixed it.
Drilled the rivets and was pleased to find that the tang full length, with two holes instead of the half length, hole-and-slot of the Gerber Gator.
(I had pictures of the assembly phase but my memory stick crapped out on my. Sorry guys.)
After prepping the tang and putting some short bolts through the rivet holes I laid up a composite grip with 3M 20122 resin and denim, over a layer of yellow thin cotton fabric.
It came out extremely well I think.
The grind on the grip is about 95% finished here.
I'll probably push the convex up a bit tomorrow.
Maybe take the flats down to 800 grit.
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