smokey
2A TEACHER
- Jan 31, 2008
- 31,497
When we got the Bear Grylls series of knives in from gerber, I was less than impressed. Gerber is known for using crappy, soft steel...which is why they're cheap. If I was Grylls, I would've insisted on things like aus-8 or better steel, steel liners for their folders, pommels on the ultimate bowie that don't break off...etc. But this isn't about the cruddy knives in the series, this is about what gerber does better....large whackin blades.
I was given the choice of a gift recently from a buddy and figured i'd give the Grylls parang a try. I have had the gerber: gator axe(the one with the recall b/c the knife falls out, but i fixed that with a rubber strap under the knife), gator machete(the one with the recall becase the handle was designed without a big enough stop and people kept slicing their hands open when trying to use the saw blade on the back...mine was post-recall), camp axe II(fandamntastic utility axe that's light enough to carry all day in my hydro-pack hiking), and my favorite.... their brush thinner. I beat my brush thinner to death and it's still going. It's one of my favorite swinging blades. My experience has been that gerber swinging edges were of decent quality, but needed to be finished where the factory left off...which was true for this as well.
I opened the package and pulled out the parang in it's sheath. The first thing that came to mind was that the handle felt much more solid than i anticipated. It doesn't have the feel of the brush thinner, where the handle feels like a seperate part. The full-tang, held in the grip with two hefty torx screws gives you impressive command and an instinctive feel for the blade. the next thing I noticed was the sheath....i'll get to that later, let's stick to the parang for now.
The grip is rubberized on the grey parts and the orange seems to be their normal nylon plastic they use for everything else. It feels quite good and fits my hand well. It's flared at the end in typical parang fashion to keep it from flying out of your sweaty hands while swinging it. It's got a finger groove right next to the top tang screw for your index finger and a generous hand stop capping it off. At the other end, there is a lanyard loop. Of course, with how front-heavy this blade is, I think i'd rather the blade go flying off away from me than swinging back if I lose my grip somehow. The solid feel of the full-tang blade does have a drawback....shock adsorbtion. If you're swingin and chopping for an extended period of time into thick branches, your hand will fatigue quickly.
The blade is of typical parang style. It's got a nice organic curve that makes swings more efficient. The blade widens as you near the tip to move the center of gravity further out towards the leading edge, facilitating powerful chops. The thickness of the blade appears to be around 3/32". Typical parangs are somewhere between a machete and a light axe. This blade could have been made better if they used a thicker blank of steel (especially along the spine) to better facilitate it's axe-like functions, but it's not bad. I wish they would have started the blade a bit closer to the hand-stop. I will be re-shaping the edge to fall closer for use on small cutting/shaving jobs. By starting the edge so far away, it erases 1/3 of the tool's possible uses and only allows you to swing it, or hold it by it's tip for fine cutting work.
The blade was of typical gerber-sharpness out of the packaging...which is about good enough to cut warm butter, but that's about it. A few passes over the sharpening wheels and now it's shaving-sharp along it's entire length. It's got a nice coating everywhere but in the area nearest the edge where the hollow-grind begins. In my experience with gerber's coatings, it'll still need some eezox to keep it from spotting rust.
Having used it around jenni's farm to clear out some thick brush and hack through a few tree limbs for the bonfire, it performed beautifully and was pleasantly efficient in cutting. A 1.5" branch is a one-swing affair to get through and 4" logs can be split easily down the middle through batoning. It did beat the insides of my hands a bit, due to it's full-tang delivering more shock than the brush thinner...but it's not terrible.
The first thing you will notice about the nylon sheath is that it won't let go of the blade when you undo the velcro strap at the top. Looking closer, you'll see two snap-buttons down along the back of the blade. Undoing these allows the blade to come free. If you don't feel like using them, you don't have to. By just pulling the velcro strap over the handguard the parang stays put in the sheath, and that is the way i carry it when in repeated use to make drawing it quicker.
If you choose to use the snaps, the blade absolutely won't come out, even if you accidentally unfastened or cut-off the velcro strap. The two downsides to this design are that 1) the area around the snaps lets dirt, mud, whatever inside the sheath from that side 2) the snaps are very tight and you've got to push the blade out from between them before you can snap them closed. To address concern 1, they put velcro strips on their side of the opening between the two snaps, but it essentially does nothing, as the velcro isn't strong enough to hold the opening together.
My final impressions of this are similar to my impressions of other gerber swinging-blades, they're quality as long as you finish where the factory left off. They're not going to be razor sharp out of the box. To better suit my needs, i'm going to move the edge closer to the handguard for smaller cutting work. The sheath is decent and useable, but not overly dripping with quality. For a value parang, this seems to do the trick.
I was given the choice of a gift recently from a buddy and figured i'd give the Grylls parang a try. I have had the gerber: gator axe(the one with the recall b/c the knife falls out, but i fixed that with a rubber strap under the knife), gator machete(the one with the recall becase the handle was designed without a big enough stop and people kept slicing their hands open when trying to use the saw blade on the back...mine was post-recall), camp axe II(fandamntastic utility axe that's light enough to carry all day in my hydro-pack hiking), and my favorite.... their brush thinner. I beat my brush thinner to death and it's still going. It's one of my favorite swinging blades. My experience has been that gerber swinging edges were of decent quality, but needed to be finished where the factory left off...which was true for this as well.
I opened the package and pulled out the parang in it's sheath. The first thing that came to mind was that the handle felt much more solid than i anticipated. It doesn't have the feel of the brush thinner, where the handle feels like a seperate part. The full-tang, held in the grip with two hefty torx screws gives you impressive command and an instinctive feel for the blade. the next thing I noticed was the sheath....i'll get to that later, let's stick to the parang for now.
The grip is rubberized on the grey parts and the orange seems to be their normal nylon plastic they use for everything else. It feels quite good and fits my hand well. It's flared at the end in typical parang fashion to keep it from flying out of your sweaty hands while swinging it. It's got a finger groove right next to the top tang screw for your index finger and a generous hand stop capping it off. At the other end, there is a lanyard loop. Of course, with how front-heavy this blade is, I think i'd rather the blade go flying off away from me than swinging back if I lose my grip somehow. The solid feel of the full-tang blade does have a drawback....shock adsorbtion. If you're swingin and chopping for an extended period of time into thick branches, your hand will fatigue quickly.
The blade is of typical parang style. It's got a nice organic curve that makes swings more efficient. The blade widens as you near the tip to move the center of gravity further out towards the leading edge, facilitating powerful chops. The thickness of the blade appears to be around 3/32". Typical parangs are somewhere between a machete and a light axe. This blade could have been made better if they used a thicker blank of steel (especially along the spine) to better facilitate it's axe-like functions, but it's not bad. I wish they would have started the blade a bit closer to the hand-stop. I will be re-shaping the edge to fall closer for use on small cutting/shaving jobs. By starting the edge so far away, it erases 1/3 of the tool's possible uses and only allows you to swing it, or hold it by it's tip for fine cutting work.
The blade was of typical gerber-sharpness out of the packaging...which is about good enough to cut warm butter, but that's about it. A few passes over the sharpening wheels and now it's shaving-sharp along it's entire length. It's got a nice coating everywhere but in the area nearest the edge where the hollow-grind begins. In my experience with gerber's coatings, it'll still need some eezox to keep it from spotting rust.
Having used it around jenni's farm to clear out some thick brush and hack through a few tree limbs for the bonfire, it performed beautifully and was pleasantly efficient in cutting. A 1.5" branch is a one-swing affair to get through and 4" logs can be split easily down the middle through batoning. It did beat the insides of my hands a bit, due to it's full-tang delivering more shock than the brush thinner...but it's not terrible.
The first thing you will notice about the nylon sheath is that it won't let go of the blade when you undo the velcro strap at the top. Looking closer, you'll see two snap-buttons down along the back of the blade. Undoing these allows the blade to come free. If you don't feel like using them, you don't have to. By just pulling the velcro strap over the handguard the parang stays put in the sheath, and that is the way i carry it when in repeated use to make drawing it quicker.
If you choose to use the snaps, the blade absolutely won't come out, even if you accidentally unfastened or cut-off the velcro strap. The two downsides to this design are that 1) the area around the snaps lets dirt, mud, whatever inside the sheath from that side 2) the snaps are very tight and you've got to push the blade out from between them before you can snap them closed. To address concern 1, they put velcro strips on their side of the opening between the two snaps, but it essentially does nothing, as the velcro isn't strong enough to hold the opening together.
My final impressions of this are similar to my impressions of other gerber swinging-blades, they're quality as long as you finish where the factory left off. They're not going to be razor sharp out of the box. To better suit my needs, i'm going to move the edge closer to the handguard for smaller cutting work. The sheath is decent and useable, but not overly dripping with quality. For a value parang, this seems to do the trick.
