Any love for the woodman's pal?

My wife got me one a couple years back and it’s a great tool to keep in my truck. I’ll use it when we cut sugarcane to make syrup and for clearing lanes prior to hunting season.
 
YES! LOVE the woodman's pal! I have two. An older Victory Tools model 481 with the wooden handle (that is broken), and then a newer Pro Tool model 284 leather handle and green canvas sheath.


The newer one with a sheath lives in my truck and has made firewood, and cleared forest roads. I'm always impressed with just how well it chops. This past spring, I had to clear a couple small trees across a forest road, and I thought, 'shoot, forgot to put an axe in the truck', but honestly, I think the woodman's pal might have done even better than an axe - because when you are chopping limbs that are hanging over a road , a heavy axe will hit them too slowly and not dig in a deep - but the woodman's pal is faster swung, and bits right in and made short work - so for certain jobs - woodman's pal is king. I have used the hook on the end when trying to clear briars and brush and brambles from a trail and that's when I realized why the end of the blade is blunt. When you are trying to clear weeds and brush and junk, the tip of the blade will frequently hit the ground.

the wood handled one lately has been living in my garage and its what I have used to strip and thin axe handles. I started using in to shave varnish off axe handles, and then realized that if I just kept scraping the handle it would keep shaving ribbons of wood off - and it works great. eventually I'll get a spoke shave maybe, but until then, this woodman's pal, a 4 way metal wood rasp, and a piece of sandpaper do all my axe handle shaping.
 
As a student of machetes, billhooks, and related "vegetation management" blades, I'm not a fan. For the original context of something issued to fairly low-skill folks you don't have time to train up, they're a sound design. For serious brush work, not so much. I'd rather have something like a 14-20" panga machete with the back of the swept tip sharpened. My Baryonyx Machete design was in part a response to the traits I found sub-par in the Woodman's Pal. Interestingly it appears as though Pro Tool Industries folded recently (after some very poor decisions on the part of management.) The current Woodman's Pal is being made by a smaller outfit and they've revised the handle design. They'll be bringing back the leather handled model in future but just have the basic model available at the moment.

Blade-over-Sheath-Resized.jpg
 
Mine's and old one. The new model isn't what I'd want. I like the old handle and it the new one needs a handguard also. I don't think I'd buy a new one, swap meet or yard sale for an old one.
 
The D-handle looks like it would get in the way of using the brush hook.--KV
 
I don't chop with the hook, I hook it around what I'm working on then pull. No chop.
 
thread bump...I've carried a Woodman's Pal when working in Pacific Northwest and Alaska since early 1990s. The new handle with finger grooves is a mistake (and in my opinion so is the version w/ hand guard). The original wood handle can be gripped in either direction and I have often used the hook in a similar fashion as an ice axe, swinging the hook into the ground or hooking limbs or roots to help me get up steep terrain.
 
Markeologist said:
No

Nope...archaeologist....but I sometimes have to cut transects like a surveyor so pretty good guess.
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That is also how I was introduced to the woodman's pal. After College I worked two years as a contract archeologist. We had a variety of "machetes" , there was the Ontario knife, the Barteaux (I think that was the one we called the Swede, must be it said swedish steel or something like that), and a woodman's pal. we used all of them daily, and we each had our favorites. The woodman's pal was by far the most heavy duty.
 
FLINT77 said:
The woodman's pal was by far the most heavy duty.
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Well, thickest blade anyway. But they're short and stocky. Made for cutting heavy brush. Not swift enough to cut lighter material.

The Barteaux machetes were made in Portland Oregon. Good steel and solid tools but I hated the wrap-around guard on the handles. It prevented you from swinging it loosely and efficiently. The style prevents a rapid back stroke.

Ontario knife made nice machetes with the 1095 that they are so famed for heat treating well. But they mostly stuck to shorth lengths, 20" or less. I've found 22" and longer machetes best for NW brush which is often heavy with blackberries. And a 22" machete can easily take a 1.5" alder in a single stroke. They are better multi-taskers.
 
Square_peg said:
Well, thickest blade anyway. But they're short and stocky. Made for cutting heavy brush. Not swift enough to cut lighter material.

The Barteaux machetes were made in Portland Oregon. Good steel and solid tools but I hated the wrap-around guard on the handles. It prevented you from swinging it loosely and efficiently. The style prevents a rapid back stroke.

Ontario knife made nice machetes with the 1095 that they are so famed for heat treating well. But they mostly stuck to shorth lengths, 20" or less. I've found 22" and longer machetes best for NW brush which is often heavy with blackberries. And a 22" machete can easily take a 1.5" alder in a single stroke. They are better multi-taskers.
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^Emphasis added. The current production with the polypropylene scales are not as nice as the older ones with phenolic scales. The older ones had the full flat grind done MUCH deeper into the stock, resulting in a livelier balance with better geometry than the largely superficial primary grind on them now. The scales were still boxy-looking like the current ones, but were subtly more rounded, making them much more comfortable. I can speak from thorough experience that the current ones are heat treated harder than I consider optimum for the steel in that application. When doing modifications on machetes for customers I'll mark out the final shape I want, then use a cutoff wheel a bit back from the line (such as not to burn the steel at the site of the final form) about 90-95% of the way through the stock thickness, then snap it off clean in a vise. When I try to do that with Ontario machetes they snap above the score line. :eek: As a result, when cutting down Ontario machetes I have to actually cut all the way through.
 
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