OK, 4th July. Neighborhood is quiet. I'm cooking ribs and sipping a cold one. Nice time to offer some first impressions of the SP 53.
Before leaving on my camping trip (into west central Maine on the AT), I practiced batoning some 2" diam 15" long wood pieces with it. I'd never tried it before. Piece of cake. Blade split the cured samples in no time. Even handled a 3" piece. The 1/4" thick blade is thick enough to handle that task well, it's flat all the way across, and the length of the blade offered plenty of room on both sides of the wood to strike the top of the blade. Check.
As it turns out, the area of my camp had a permanent fire restriction in place (not forest fire related, but ... well, the story is complicated so I'll leave it at that), so I built no open fires, thus batoned no more wood. (If I'd had to build an emergency fire, the baton concept would have been useful though: I mentioned in a post above that I got dumped on for 5 of nine days in a very wet set of storms, and the wood was pretty wet.)
So, my main use of it was clearing trails. There are a number of trails in the area, but some are maintained, some are not. I took a couple that were not maintained (to avoid touristas), and ran into several sections where I had to remove briars and saplings up to 1", and trim some limbs up to about an inch also. No problem there, either. For briars and other weeds, a longer dedicated machete (like those I'd used in the past) would have done a better job. It's a better chopper than machete, for sure.
For the tree limbs, the weight of the 53 is excellent, especially since most of the blade is forward. I'd tried to use my Kabar 7" in the past (the 53 is replacing that one), and it was a hassle; not enough length or heft. The 53 just takes them right off.
At one point, I accidentally brushed my left thumb against the blade while trying to wrestle a large limb out of a tangle as rain was picking up from a sprinkle to a pour. It made a small 1/3" cut right on my first knuckle; bled like a stuck pig for a couple of minutes, but pressure with a bandana stopped the blood. First aid kit was in inches away, so I sanitized it and put on a large bandaid. Two days later, I splinted it because bending was preventing healing. It's fine now, but note to self: try not to be stupid with sharp things.
I did use it also to cut up some 1/2" twigs to feed my hobo stove (homemade prototype produced with a #10 tin can and a couple of metal rods stuck from side to side for a grate; still needs more work to increase air flow). Hacking up limbs into 4" pieces for the stove was simple work.
Just for grins, I hacked up several 2 - 3" inch pieces into fire wood lengths. Piece of cake. Almost as effective as my hatchets of the past, but I found it easier because of the longer blade surface. One review I read before purchasing it suggested that the weight was too heavy, that repeated chopping resulted in fast tiring. Well, I'm a skinny guy, and never got tired while cutting with it. (Of course, I wasn't working with it for hours.) Quite the opposite: I found the extra weight of the 1/4" blade to be an asset. It's got the heft of a hatchet, but handles better.
I also tried my hand at "whittling" a little bit, like Jim has done (described in another thread) with his Kabar 1248. For me, it was mostly striping wet bark off of wood for fire in my stove, but I also created some feather sticks. I choked up on the handle, and let my index finger ride in the choil at the rear of the blade. (I had previously taken the edge off of the blade for 1/2" in front of the choil to prevent cuts.) Very easy; again, the weight and heft of the blade made quick work of feathering, but the handle offered fine control.
Speaking of the handle, I love it. It fits my small hands very well. Grip is excellent, especially with the swollen middle portion and indents all the way around. The grip is actually flattened somewhat on the sides, which greatly increased my ability to grip it with small hands. (It's not large and tubular.)
I had planned to try my hand at cutting some saplings to build a lean to (just for practice), but the weather was just too bad, and I was more interested in hiking on the nice days.
The sheath is adequate, but not great. It has two thumb-snap straps that wrap around the handle. I usually used only the bottom one, closest to the blade. They hold the blade in the sheath very securely. Problem though: the bottom strap curls, so when drawing the blade, it twice cut into the strap; not deeply, but it has some substantive knicks in it. Now, when I draw, I have to take extra care with that.
There are no drain holes or aeration holes that I can see in the kydex.
The sheath has sufficient strapage on the back to fit molle gear, but I usually just stuck it under the compression straps on my pack, with the bottom of the sheath sitting down in a water bottle holder at pack bottom. Like a charm, and easy access.
Next trip, and especially as fall approaches, I'll likely be camping in an area that allows fires, so will let you know about chopping larger wood.
That's it for now.
