The Machete Project

September 20, 2014 6:28 AM

Photographer Vanessa Ahlsborn's Machete Project "is an ongoing portrait and object archive that showcases the diversity of this blade style and the beauty of its users. Despite their fearsome reputation in western news media and popular culture, the machete is an extremely versatile and commonplace asset for many people across the world. By documenting the everyday user for whom the machete is an invaluable tool, the project seeks to question the viewer's assumptions about the machete, and by extension, the people who use it."

Outside and aCurator have galleries of some of the photos with captions.

posted by Dip Flash (21 comments total)

I kept a machete for home - defense and emergency lawn care for ages.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 7:12 AM on September 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

She seems to be using a pretty darn loose definition of "machete" here; I spotted at least a couple kukris and sickles in with that bunch.
posted by fifthrider at 7:45 AM on September 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

I hereby preemptively disarm Danny Trejo references from this post.

Cool post. Seems like "machete" is an overly broad term judging by the wild assortment of blades on that post.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:45 AM on September 20, 2014

using a pretty darn loose definition of "machete" here

Jinx!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:46 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

According to where you live also known as Cutlass (Caribbean) or Panga (E. Africa) and I am sure there are a whole bunch more local variations.
posted by adamvasco at 7:48 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

What a lot of rust.

I don't get the feeling that most of these blades are used at all regularly. I see beauty in a well designed, made and cared-for tool being used properly. All I see here is tetanus.
posted by YAMWAK at 7:52 AM on September 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Never had any but army machetes (or anyway ones from army-navy stores) and they aren't very pretty, plastic grip scales and all, but at least that means it's OK to sharpen them with a sandpaper disk on an electric drill. The metal is harder than I want to work on with a file and the sandpaper disk makes a nice shower of sparks.

For hardcore gardening, as Megami says. I let my back yard get away from me longer than I shoulda and suddenly there several slender weedy things that are a good 18 feet tall. I am going to approach these with the machete later this afternoon. Carefully, in case they're triffids. (If I never log in here again, they were.)
posted by jfuller at 8:37 AM on September 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

I got mine at Home Depot.
posted by valkane at 8:42 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Malay version is the parang. Curved, nice balance and heft, 5mm thick at the back, various lengths depending on use. The curve of the handle is especially comfortable for swinging. A guy in my area hand-makes them from old truck springs, with the wooden bits from fruit trees. Here's the one he made for me, with a lime wood handle.
posted by BinGregory at 8:42 AM on September 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

The wooden sheaths are cool - the classiest way is to carve it out of a block of wood and hollow out the slot for the blade. That's tough and so the more common ones, like mine, are cut in half, hollowed out and then glued back again, or, in the old days, strapped together.
posted by BinGregory at 8:56 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Required song for this post: Sick of it All - Machete (speaking of "fearsome reputation")
posted by symbioid at 9:02 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

The more common parangs in the hardware store will have plastic handles instead. The optics aren't so nice and they have a way of coming loose more often. You can buy the plastic handles and blades separately - to fit one to your blade, you heat up the tang till it's red hot and then jam it into the plastic. Or if you're repairing one that came loose, jam a plastic shopping bag in the old slot. After it stops sizzling and fuming, you're good to go. Here's my workaday one.
posted by BinGregory at 9:08 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

using a pretty darn loose definition of "machete" here

I think she's using the term broadly for "large utilitarian blade with a short handle." If you check out the "machetes by style and type" page at MacheteSpecialists.com ("More brands and styles of machetes than anywhere else in the world"), they include even more types.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:38 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think your judgment of the today ignores the fact that most of these machetes are utilitarian tools in tropical locations where EVERYTHING rusts, molds, or otherwise gets damaged from the significant ambient moisture, and also people use their machetes until they literally fall apart. They basically fill every possible function. I butchered a chicken with a machete, and was using it to slice eggplants, but I made the women in the village too nervous, so they took the machete away from me and gave it to the 8-year old girls who'd been using them regularly since they were four or five for everything from chopping wood to farm work to cutting coconut. After carrying things on my head, machete skills are the next things I want to learn for fitting in in rural West Africa.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:22 AM on September 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

I spent a few months in Central America, and I have to say I fully agree with what most other people in this post are saying. Machetes are truly things of beauty, and that's not something you'll get until you see a guy chop a two mile long stretch of rough jungle completely clear in the matter of a few hours, then use it like a precision tool to turn fallen branches into Lincoln Log like dowels and posts to make a more than decent lean-to shelter in about 40 minutes, then make a clothesline by tying one end of a short length of twine to a tree, and the other to the handle of a machete, and anchoring it in the soil of a bare hill.

Like, what?
posted by Krazor at 11:47 AM on September 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

I tend to categorize machetes as inexpensive, large stamped carbon steel knives, tempered more like springs for durability than for edge holding. Also makes them easy to maintain in the field using simple abrasives or files. These are the things seen commonly in places like Latin America and Africa. Being inexpensive, stamped carbon steel, means that they tend to be more or less factory-made from thin, flat stock. Cutting/chopping ability is enhanced by adding length and/or width to the blade shape.

In contrast, many large Asian blades are forged by local smiths from things like leaf springs. Their heft comes from being thicker material. As the world gets smaller, I think these styles may fall by the wayside and become regarded more highly as examples of craftsmanship. Or not, as up until recently, they tended to be pretty crudely made, since despite the labor intensive manufacturing process, they were used the same way cheap machetes in Latin America and Africa have been used. Excessive finishing touches would likely be frivolous.

Rust is pretty common feature of these kinds of tools. Doesn't affect performance. And if you are in a damp place, cutting vegetation with carbon steel, the blade will lose its shine in about 5 minutes. The only part likely to remain shiny is the edge, where the sharpening takes place.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:55 AM on September 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Throughout the islands of Micronesia machetes are common, used for all kinds of purposes. Opening a drinking coconut (Nu in Chuukese or Ne in Marshallese) is probably one of the most frequent uses. It's not uncommon to see kids as young as 7 or 8 carrying a well worn machete.

In the 1970's Mexican wildland firefighters used machetes in place of chainsaws to clear fireline through chaparral. One method was to use a stick in one hand to deftly flick the branch cut with the machete off to the side.

I haven't used mine in years but still keep it in my garden shed in the backyard. More a memento now than anything else.
posted by X4ster at 12:23 PM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

A tour of Bidor Blacksmith, a Malaysian workshop producing parangs for worldwide export.
posted by BinGregory at 3:39 PM on September 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

This was our machete of choice in my childhood, used primarily in our banana farm and scrapping about in the scrub, a legacy of my father's own childhood amongst the sugarcane in northern Queensland. Thanks for the post.
posted by smoke at 7:38 PM on September 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

We used a panga to chop wood when I was a kid. Got to be very skilled with it, my Dad still chops fire wood with it now.
posted by arcticseal at 9:29 PM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

My Florida gardening kit includes my army-navy surplus machete, two sets of hedge loppers, small handheld pruning shears, a big heavy shovel for digging holes and whacking cane toads, the pocket knife I do everything with, and at times the butcher knife from the kitchen.

I probably look like some kind of mad post-apocalyptic prepper when I load up on all this junk to tend my back yard jungle, but hey, it works.

I always hope the Jehovah's Witnesses will show up on gardening day. Because answering the door with a butcher knife jammed through a belt loop and a machete in my hand would be hysterical.
posted by cmyk at 6:06 AM on September 21, 2014 [1 favorite]