Cold Steel Kukri Machete

After sharpening :

Description from Cold Steel :

Machetes :

These blades are made out of 1055 Carbon Steel with a tough spring temper and are surfaced with a black, baked-on anti-rust finish. Each Cold Steel� machete comes with a good utility edge which, with just a little work, can be made hair shaving sharp. The tough, Polypropylene handles of our machetes are designed to provide a comfortable secure grip, and they are rugged enough to resist chipping, cracking or breaking, so they last practically forever.

Kukri machete :

There's no single edged weapon that we can think of that can out-chop or out-cut a good Kukri. It's true that the best Kukris, like our LTC and Gurkha models, can be somewhat expensive. While those "thoroughbreds" perform extraordinarily well for the money that they cost, it sometimes seems that what's required is a good, inexpensive, "workhorse" model. Our Kukri Machetes are those workhorses. They are available in two sizes, one has a thirteen inch blade and the other, our new "Magnum" model has a whopping seventeen inch blade. Both are ready to plow through the toughest chores life can dish out. Each features the distinctive weight-forward balance of our "top-of-the-line" models, and always present their edge on an angle so they're guaranteed to "bite" deep with every stroke. Additionally, they come complete with a sturdy Cor-Ex sheath! They're a solid value, ready for long, hard work.

This Cold Steel Kukri machete review consists of :

Specifications

The Cold Steel Kukri Machete, a few specifications :

Initial impressions :

There are a decent amount of reviews/commentaries on this khukuri and the all commonly site the lack of initial sharpness. The most intensive and exhaustive heavy use test is Noss's Cold Steel Kukri Destruction Test on KnifeTests.com which shows just how insanely durable that a mid-carbon steel blade can be when it is properly hardened.

Stock testing : main

The initial sharpness was non existant. The bevels simply did not even meet. The edge was formed very roughly on a wheel as the bevel was hollow ground. As noted in the picture on the right (50X magnification) the edge had significant dips and hollows, as bought it had no fine cutting ability, it had no ability to cut :

It also had little carving ability on woods and it was not effective or even safe to chop with because the edge was likely to skip very easy. Before any work was done with the knife it was sharpened maintaining while the initial edge angle.

Comparing the rough carving ability to a #1260 Mora on some pine (0.5x1.5") by making two inch points, the cutting ability of the khukuri machete was clearly outclassed. That would be expected as :

The Mora takes 4-5 slices to make a point on the pine and the machete takes 18-20 slices, being outperformed 4:1. Of course in general the machete would simply chop a point not carve it, but the performance ratio would tend to hold for any cutting of a rigid medium as the angle is simply far too high. Note that even to achieve this performance the grip had to be held far forward in a choked up grip, the ergonomics are poor here as the tip of the grip is squarish and with extended use this would hot spot readily. With a regular hammer type grip the performance would decrease by about 50% as the cutting ability starts about 5 cm in front of the index finger (my hand is 10 cm wide, so 5/10 is 50% is how to calculate the leverage disadvantage).

Comparing the Kukri Machete against the 14" Sportsman Fiskars small hatchet bucking some construction lumber to length. There was no need to take measurements to see the huge difference and there were a few obvious aspects right from the initial few cuts :

The abrupt nature of the edge bevel also drastically effects comfort as the impulse or shock on the blade is immediate. The machete does not have the smooth entry into wood which would come from a primary grind so essentially all the cutting is done in the very short distance of the single bevel which is quite an abrupt cut and thus the shock is high. This also makes the handle much more abrasive in hand than necessary

For those interested in statistics, the chopping comparison in terms of the number of cuts required is shown on the right. Note :

The large variability is just due to the nature of the wood, even in the same tree wood can easily vary by twice the number of cuts. This is why it is necessary to usually do a lot of cuts to make any kind of accurate judgment about the performance of a chopping tool. However the kind of issues raised with the machete are obvious even from the first few cuts.

Field

Using the khukuri machete on light vegetation shows the strong benefit that long blades like machetes have over axes and other short tools. The machete easily cuts swaths of light grasses such as shown to the right far easier than an axe (which would be clumsy) and a short blade which would be many times more time consuming. The only clear problem is that it takes very little wood chopping to reduce the edge to the point where it will not cut grasses at all. But again that is likely due to the initial edge being burnt in the shaping and it should be resolved after subsequent sharpenings to remove all the damaged metal.

Using the machete for a simple task of starting a fire, it performed the following tasks in a capable manner :

It handled all of these decently well but again would benefit from a much more acute edge angle as it was breaking the frozen woods as often as it was cutting. Also even a moderate amount of work noted caused a significant degredation to the edge. The only real downside noted to the khukuri shape in general was that compared to a bolo it did not work nearly as well at breaking off dead limbs as the downsweep of the tip caused it to glance off branches rather than break them.

Edge Retention

The first chopping comparison cutting a few dozen pieces of :

The sharpness of the khukuri was nonexistant after the wood was cut. The same performance was noted with repeated work. It would take only a few minutes work of wood chopping to dull the machete to the point it would not cut grasses. However as noted this was likely the edge being burnt during the initial shaping.

As the knife kept being used the sharpness kept improving steadily and it did not take more than a few sessions of being used and sharpened before it got to the point where the machete could be used as a reference blade and chop about 100 pieces of 2x4 sized wood and still retain a fine cutting edge and be able to cut grasses and other light vegetation (and of course slice paper and other common tests of sharpness).

Sharpening

As-Boxed : using a 200 grit silicon carbide waterstone it took approximately ten minutes for the majority of the edge (more than 90%) of the as-ground edge bevels to meet clearly, at this point it was safe and functional to use.

The largest issue with sharpening is that the initial edge comes "burnt" or over heated in the initial shaping from Cold Steel and thus it will not take a truly sharp edge as it just keeps breaking away under finer stones. It isn't practical to refine the edge until this stops happening so for a few uses and sharpening the grit finish wasn't brought above a 1000 grit waterstone.

Once the edge started lasting long enough to cut through about 100 pieces of 2x4 sized wood and still retain fine cutting sharpness (able to cut grasses and such) then it was now problem to put a shaving edge on the blade as the steel was past the burnt point. In regards to the nature of sharpening as this is a medium carbon very low carbide steel it can be easily sharpened on very cheap stones and has little burr formation and grinds extremely easy.

The only real issue with sharpening is that since the machete has a single bevel, when sharpening there is a fairly wide strip of metal which has to be sharpened and this takes a long as as sharpening time is proportional to edge width. This can be solved by actually applying a primary grind as noted below.

Grip

The grip has a decent shape, oval enough to prevent rolling in hand but not so thin that it is a high pressure point. The checkering is very aggressive and well suited with a light grip commonly used in snap cuts. No issues where noted with retention / slipping or in general excessive shock or discomfort. However a number of people have complained about the handle

such as noted in the video on the right. Handles can be very personal especially with issues noted on abrasive nature and these types of issues can be resolved with an appropriate wrap such as ranger bands.

Overview

The Cold Steel Kukri machete has a number of strong attributes :

However it also has a number of very poor attributes : Fortunately all of these can be solved with a regrind.

Regrind and Modifications

As the machete has strong potention but suffered significantly from :

The machete was reground with a variable profile :

With the regrind the performance increased dramatically :

The machete was then reground for another ten minutes, just to thin out the bevels so they all had the same primary grind of 6.5 dps through the entire blade length. This took another ten minutes on the grinder.

Using the reground machete cutting some construction lumber :

The penetration had increased however more importantly the machete was more fluid in the wood and thus the fatigue was improved. The primary grind also made the entry into the wood "spread out" and not be so abrupt and thus the shock was less and it was more comfortable in hand.

In some detail, a histogram showing the chopping performance by chop count is shown to the right. A few comments compared to the previous histogram as shown in the stock comparison work in the above :

In short, there is a small increase in chopping performance by cut count but statistically it is not significantly different (the difference is not large enough compared to the standard deviations). This isn't unexpected because the regrinding didn't alter the edge angle only thinned it out and thus it would not be expected to make that large of a difference only about 10-20% which is in line with what is seen.

The Kukri Machete was also further modified :

These modifications made the machete a much more versatile tool and expanded its use a a general cutting tool.

Some work with the reground kukri machete alongside the Buck Hoodlum and Chris Cain. In short the Kukri Machete :

Note a lot of work has been done on the Kukri Machete to get it to this point and the other two knives are being used as-shipped, but the work is nothing that could not be done with a file and dedication to a few hours of work.

Comments and references

Comments can be emailed to Knife Review : Cold Steel Kukri Machete

Or in the YouTube PlayList for the Cold Steel Kukri Machete.

Most of the pictures in the above are in the Cold Steel Kukri machete album at PhotoBucket.

Last updated : 27/12/2011
Originally written: 27/12/2011
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