Hand Tools and Techniques for Home Landscaping

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You can find a great variety of machete-type brush knives, corn knives, and thin-steel bolo or standard blade machetes with plastic or wooden handles, each designed for a specific job in a particular region of the world. My favorite is the Heavy Duty Ontario Machete, made by Ontario Knife, the same company that made the K-Bar fighting knife I was issued from a Naval Store in the South Pacific in another era.

The Ontario Machete has a 1/6" thick blade of finely tempered, mild (easily sharpened) tool steel, a matte black Parkerized blade, and comes with a standard or saw toothed back. You can get one for $12 if you look around. A canvas sheath is a few bucks extra. A military surplus khaki fiberglass sheath won't cost $5, but may take some catalog searching. They are practically indestructible, and they have a spring-activated automatic edge sharpener at the mouth.

The handle is black Bakelite which is slipperier than the wood found on its Brazilian-made counterpart. But there is a good inch-long pommel at the bottom-rear of the handle to keep it from flying out of your hand, and the rear 2" of the blade is unsharpened in case your hand slides forward of the small hilt/hand-guard. The handle is attached with four steel cutler's rivets and there's a hole at the end to accept a leather thong. With the thong tied in a 10" to 12" loop and wrapped twice around the wrist, the machete isn't going far even if it does slip out of a sweatdrenched grip now and again.

When using the machete, scythe, kitchen knife, or wood-carving tool, I carry a Schrade HoneSteel. This is an 1/8" thick by 1" by 5" bar of metal/ceramic composite with one end sharpened, the other with a hole for a thong, and a leather sheath. Its extremely hard surfaces are milled to give a fine edge to any standard (non-stainless and thus easily-sharpened) tool steel implement. It will serve as a splitting wedge, a chisel or, struck against any steel, as a firestarter.

If stranded on a tropical island with the choice of any three things, my first and second choices would be a machete and a HoneSteel. I'd have to think about the third choice.

Take Care

The usual machete stroke in light brush is back and forth, swiveling the wrist at the end of each stroke. The work goes at a steady pace if you keep the end of the blade well-sharpened and take no more of a bite than you can get through with minimal effort, letting the weight of the blade do most of the work. But it is easy to get tired or too confident, especially when you are working low to the ground and the vegetation you are cutting into is obscured. The blade can slide off a woody trunk that is stouter than anticipated or bounce off an unseen rock and, if you've let your grip get loose, it can slip out of your hand.

If a piece of vine or whippy sapling won't hold still, you may be tempted to rear backwards and take a great whack at it. Using excessive force is a mistake with any cutting tool. Let the tool do the work, sharpening it if necessary. Better yet, grab the offending whip, pull up or down till it is tight, then cut it with the blade edge close to the handle with a short up or down stroke. Aim away from your hand and arm. Often what works best is moving the blade sideways at the same time and making a lateral, slashing cut.

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