The earliest machetes were born entirely to meet the diverse livelihood needs of the local people in terms of fishing, hunting, farming, and forestry. Usually, the machete is a multi-functional utility tool with a kutsilyo sa pangangaso and an ax since the tool is also a weapon.
In the very early Iron Age, when humans were active in forests, grasslands, or savannahs with few trees, they would wear some kind of tool knife for self-defense, hunt wild animals, or cut firewood to warm up and bake food. They even built simple wooden huts that are windproof, rainproof, sunshade and sunscreen.
The main function of the machete is to cut down the branches and vines that hinder the movement when traveling through the mountainous area, or to cut wood for fire.
▲Various outdoor machetes in modern civilized society
▲ According to the needs of the natural environment, various machetes with different functions can be customized
The tool knife used in different natural environments is also different. If it belongs to the tropical, subtropical virgin forest, and tropical rain forest with very dense and diverse vegetation, there are many opportunities to cut trees to open the way. The ideal machete is usually no more than half a meter in length and weighs about a catty. Too heavy and too long will affect the use effect. In addition to cutting trees to open the way, the ideal machete also has the functions of self-defense against the enemy and cutting animal meat with the function of taking meat, such a machete is like a typical machete in people’s impression.
▲ Outdoor survival machete processing tools
What’s interesting is that no matter any aborigines in the forested mountainous area, their ancestors have lived here for generations, and all of them are very good at cutting trees and grass to make way. They also hunt through the forest on their own, especially when stalking wild animals, but usually by stealth. Because on the one hand, the aborigines are reluctant to wear out the machete, and because it is very tiring to open a long-distance road through the forest, most of them track their prey through the natural beast trails formed by the trampling of wild animals; Scare away wild animals, and the smell of freshly cut branches will drive away wild animals that are about to enter the hunting area. Later, the special forces imitated the way of learning from the aborigines, and they didn’t need to open the way with machetes, so as to avoid leaving traces and revealing their feet, which would definitely attract the enemy to follow them.
▲Using a machete to open a road through the jungle will leave traces and be easily tracked, so special forces rarely use a machete to open a road
In the cold northern forest areas, there are mostly temperate coniferous forests. The coniferous forest wood is mostly straight fiber, soft wood, rich in turpentine, and easy to burn when exposed to fire. Simply cut a little sawdust with a small straight knife to ignite. A raging fire kept warm. In coniferous forest areas, the mountains are usually covered by heavy snow in winter, crushing the branches of trees, and the summer is short and cool, both of which will limit the growth of trees, so the branches of trees are sparse, the forest is not very dense, and shrubs and thatch are almost uncommon, so it is not common in the north. A machete is needed to cut down vine branches, and an ax is more than enough. And the practicality of a hunting knife in this place is far greater than that of a machete.
The efficiency of using an ax to cut wood for fire and build a wooden house is much better than that of a machete. Therefore, some hunters combined the concepts of hunting knife and axe into one big hunting knife bowie, which also has the function of opening mountains. The early Indians in the temperate coniferous forests of North America did not know how to smelt and forge iron, and the supply of iron was limited. They usually used an ax not only as a hunting knife, but also as a knife for logging and making fire, and sometimes as a throwing weapon. Throwing axes bring down large beasts like giant bears and bison.
In the African savannah, lions, leopards, hyenas, and rhinos are frequent beasts, as well as edible zebras and antelopes, which are all large herbivores. To fight against these large wild animals, most African aborigines use dart guns and spears. The total weight of the lengthy spears, steel tips and wood are not light. The acceleration of gravity is enough to knock down all kinds of beasts without being hurt, which is the main reason why the machete is not practical here. Therefore, the main hunting self-defense weapon carried by the local aborigines is the spear, and even the tip of the spear is used as a knife to carve wood to make daily necessities.
▲African aborigines use spears to deal with projectile beasts, which are far more practical than machetes, because they can keep a certain safe distance from wild animals, so machetes are not very popular in the local area
In the Age of Discovery at the end of the 15th century, before Westerners colonized the world, they did not need machetes in their original areas of life. Their knowledge of machetes was limited. Since they invaded new colonies, they often needed to walk through the bushes in the south, and the machete was called the bush knife, which later evolved into a large comprehensive tool knife common to the entire western powers, and the main machete was called the machete, which literally translates as a machete.
The thin blade of the Machete scimitar is flexible, and head-to-head collisions will cause the blade to shake violently. The problem of the mouth defect caused by martial arts enthusiasts who are not good at sword fighting can be alleviated, and the defect is also small after being used as a machete. On western sailing ships with less convenient environment and narrow space, the defects of thin steel knives are also easy to wear off. The machete, which has the above advantages and is easy to mass-produce, has gradually evolved into the only original machete in the western knife world after removing the guard. Later, it was sent to colonies around the world by the western colonists in the era of great navigation, so today Central and South America, Africa, the Indonesian archipelago in Asia, as well as the Americas and Europe are all covered with the shadow of the Machete.
▲ Various versions of Machete scimitars used by European sailors in the age of great navigation in the Middle Ages are also common portable weapons for pirates
Therefore, the trend of playing machetes in modern times was pioneered in the western world, and the development process from scratch is also very complete. Many well-known modern machetes brands are also from the west.
▲The machete used by Mr. Pei’s accompanying companions in “Survival in the Wild” is also like a pirate machete. The machete is still alive in the hearts of knife lovers.
During World War II, the United States fought hard against the Japanese invaders in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia and South Sea islands. To cope with the problem of overcoming obstacles in the tropical rainforests, they developed the American-made M1942 Eighteen-cut Machete based on the machete. The length of the blade is 18 inches (1 inch = 2.54 cm), so it is affectionately called Eighteen Cuts (chop) by the aborigines in Southeast Asia.
Some eighteen chopping knives have scrapers attached to their scabbards. When the knives are blunt, they can be sharpened by scratching on them. Some knives have serrations on the back that can be used as wet wood saws to remove all kinds of objects that block chariots and artillery vehicles. The tree trunk is obstructed, but the military is worried that the soldiers will not obey the discipline. If they pick up the Eighteen Cutting Swords and commit chaos, almost all the Eighteen Cutting Swords will be put away for safekeeping, and they will be distributed to soldiers only when they are used in combat.
▲Various versions of WWII US-made M1942 Eighteen-Chop Knife
When the British dealt with the Japanese devils on the Burmese jungle battlefield in World War II, they were also equipped with eighteen machetes and hired a minority Gurkha in Nepal as mercenaries. In the high mountain areas of the Himalayas, they traveled to climb mountains with heavy loads for their livelihood. They had large lung capacity, good physical fitness, and were able to bear hardships and stand hard work. They became the main source of British mercenaries. The Gurkha mercenaries found in the jungle battle that the elastic blade of the 18th machete is not suitable for chopping hard wood. They brought the Gurkha tribe’s scimitar Kukri with the traditional anti-curved blade design of the tribe from their hometown. It is said that in close combat, the total length of the scimitar is only about 40 centimeters, but it can easily kill the enemy.
Among the Gurkha knives, those up to 120 cm long belong to weapons, and those of medium length belong to machetes. Because most stainless-steel mountain knives cannot withstand the rough work of chopping hardwood, only high-carbon steel with excellent toughness can do it. Therefore, the current Gurkha machete products in circulation are high-carbon steel hand-forged products made by local craftsmen. The modern British army once produced standard Gurkha scimitars and distributed them to Gurkha mercenaries, but it should be difficult to find genuine ones at present.
▲Various versions of the Gurkha Recurve Scimitar
What is the chopping ability of Shiba Zhandao on hardwood? I’ve seen several knife lovers use this long knife to slash hardwood, only to have the blade bounce back, cut hiking boots, or be a false alarm. Because the blade of the Shiba Zhan Dao is elastic, when the force generated by chopping a hard object exceeds the rigidity of the blade body, the blade body will shake violently to counteract the force, so even if the blade hits a hard object, there will not be too much damage. The large gap also shows that the design of the Shiba Zhandao’s blade itself has the problem of insufficient ability to chop hard wood.
However, when the eighteen chopping knife cuts branches, thatch, etc., the object will fall backwards away from the cutting power of the blade, so the cutting power will be weakened.
▲Classic Tsunami
One of the great advantages of the reverse-curved blade design of the Gurkh curved scimitar is that when chopping branches, the branches can be cut off with the blade after being hooked, unlike ordinary curved scimitars that require higher skills and strength.
The second major advantage of the Gurkha Recurve Scimitar is: using the widened blade tip and the downwardly curved blade front, the blade holder’s sense of direction is greatly improved, the blade is accurate and the destructive power is strong. You may wish to do an experiment: hold an L-shaped square for woodworking, point forward horizontally with a general ruler, twist your wrist slightly left and right, and feel the change in the angle of inclination, and the short end of the L-shaped square is very easy to move up and down. Feel the slight side-to-side tilt of your wrist. This is a very important design element of the machete.
▲Tactical Tsunami
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