I've had the chance to put both the Camillus Carnivore and Gerber Gator machetes to use, so it's time for an update with my first impressions after some pretty heavy use. It should go without saying here that either of these will make mince meat of tall grasses, cat tails, soft weeds, soft vines, etc. I've been putting em through more intense workouts. I still plan to do a long-term review on these after a season or so of thrashing them.
First up is the Gerber. The main blade was not nearly as sharp out of the box as the Camillus, but that is not necessarily a bad thing with an axe or machete. You want, usually, an edge with less of an angle on it so that it lasts longer chopping into hard material. With tools like this, you let the weight of the tool and your swing do the work, not the edge of the blade. The Gerber did a fantastic job of butchering briars, vines, gigantic weeds, and very thin saplings that had begun to spring up around my fence in the back yard. One swing was enough to plow through any of these. Afterward, I noticed at the base of one of my trees that another tree was attempting to rise up, with about three trunks of various heights and widths. They averaged about one inch across. I decided to see if I could take them down with the Gator's main chopping blade. I'm happy to say that it started tearing into those little trunks like a happy hatchet, and before long, I had some long, slender firewood. So then I started taking low hanging limbs of the same size off the large tree, same results. Not too bad, for a machete.
Later, I tried chopping a three inch limb the same manner, and it was making a good dent, although I could tell that cutting firewood this way would take a while. More on that in a few. I thought this would be a good time to try out the sawback on the Gator. I have to say, that thing chews through wood like Charlie Sheen does drugs and whores. It is much, much easier to use than I thought, and before I knew it, I had nearly cut the log in half without much effort at all. I am confident that you could cruise control through these type logs all day. I should note, this was some pretty hard wood too, not soft pine. Lastly, just for kicks, I swung down hard on a big piece of split firewood, with the grain, to see how deep I could bury the blade. It damn near buried halfway up the blade, and was a little stiff to remove. I wonder if you could split firewood with this puppy...another test for another day I reckon. The blade edge after all this fun was in pretty good shape. There were a couple minor dings, and one pretty serious one where I hit a small chunk of concrete on accident while trying to rob a nasty briar of it's wretched life. I should be able to get the whole thing back into good shape with a little time and a file. Movin on...
Like I said earlier, the Carnivore had a very sharp blade out of the box. I never used it on vines or briars, I went straight to chopping firewood and small limbs. It performed like the Gerber. I did notice that the sharper blade made a difference on the type of cuts it made, as did the thicker blade. Like the Gator, I could tell it would take a while to chip through a decent size log, but you could use it to fell a small tree if you had to, just be prepared to spend a while doing it. I noticed right away the answer to some predictions I had about the blade and overall size of the Carnivore. First, the short blade is light and easy to swing around for a while. Even with the blade being almost twice as thick as a traditional machete blade, it feels lighter. Having said all that, you don't get the death-chop leverage that a longer machete offers. The second thing I noticed is that the beefier blade adds heft to each swing, so you make up a little of the ground lost by length. I don't know if they knew what they were doing with the Carnivore and did it on purpose, but I like the idea of achieving the same performance with different dimensions. The compact package still gets me grinning like an idiot. The serrations on the Camillus don't work as well as the Gator's saw, which was to be expected. They require a little more work and technique, but will do the job eventually. I'm not sure how long the serrations will hold up before needing a tune up under this kind of pressure, but I imagine the Gator saw will last a good bit longer. The fine edge on the blade was in great shape after all the hard work, only slightly more dull than when new.
The grips were good and comfortable on both, I didn't really have a favorite, and neither was uncomfortable. Both seemed to have good edge retention, although right now the Gerber blade seems to be a little softer. The Gerber saw wins over the Camillus serrations. The weight and size of the Camillus still make it my current favorite, but I have to admit, that built in limb saw is hard to resist. I imagine I'm going to be swapping around and playing a good bit with different roles for each, see what works best. I usually grab my axe to do my firewood choppin, I even keep it on my pack most of the time, but I may have to give thought to letting one of these two machetes fill in. The upside to the dilemma is that I have two great tools to pick from!
-Owen
No comments:
Post a Comment