TRUPER T-1173-27B Black Handle Caguayana Style Machetes, Rivetless 27" (69cm)

This is lightweight great for cutting small branches and easy to swing back and forth.bi live it, it does the work excellent.

Great quality I love it.

I have several machetes but I needed a longer one with a bit more swing weight, for clearing some small saplings and heavy brush. This style and size is great for that. The concentration of weight behind the sweet spot gives it a lot of chopping power. Next best thing to a light axe but still usable for clearing light stuff. Right out of the box it had a useful, if unspectacular, edge. Most machetes come unsharpened, with only a suggestion of a bevel. This one was actually usable without addressing with the file. I think, after a short session yesterday with it, that I will really like this one though I might also look for the same style but about 4" shorter to replace a couple of my smaller blades. Machetes are meant to be easily sharpened, not to hold an edge. Hardness is supposed to be less than for a knife. This one did not disappoint though a little more tempering would not be out of place. For the uninformed, hardening is the process of heating to asustenize, and then quenching to convert soft austenite to hard martensite. Tempering is heating to a lower temperature and cooling naturally, and makes the steel less brittle than as hardened. Tempering makes it more resilient and tougher, essentially "less hard", and this blade was near the top of the acceptable range of hardness for a machete, but not over it.Persons of small stature or less accustomed to hard physical labor will find this particular size and style a bit much to use for an extended period. This is a pretty hefty unit, so if you are not a real machetero, you should consider one that is a few inches shorter. this one is 32'5/8" overall, with 27" of exposed blade. Some machetes are sold by exposed blade length, and some, especially shorter ones, are sold by overall length. You can get fairly good chopping power with a shorter machete that has more of a billhook or cane knife shape, and you can do better in grass or light brush with a narrower blade and only slightly shorter. Either option will be less fatiguing. Swing a big machete for even just a couple of hours if you are not quite used to it, and your forearm will feel like it was beaten with a hammer the next day or two.What I absolutely hate about this machete is the handle. It absolutely sucks. It is impossible to grip, wearing gloves. Unfortunately it is molded around the tang, not riveted, so it is going to be a big PITA to remove and replace with something more ergonomic. If there is one thing that needs to be changed with this machete, it is the sorry no good POS handle, and whoever designed it has obviously never spent a day with it in his hand, trying to get some actual work done with it.

Thickness, sharpness

The Truper T machete is the machete you want to have if you need to do large are clearing or trail blazing. The long flexible blade clears a wide swath from high limbs to low line vegetation. When the desired edge is applied by the user the Truper T machete will clear it with ease. Great for clearing camp sites and hunting blinds.

Nice and long. Decent grip but rust easy and lose sharpness quickly. Needs to sharpen often if you do lots of small branch cutting.For the money, it's a decent machete.