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- Oct 27, 2010
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I picked up this 1945 vintage machete at the flea market a few months ago with a busted handle for only $10 with plans of just rehandling it. I ended up reshaping the tip as well as refining the handl shape.
The Miartindale Alligator brand is made in England, from a high carbon steel. HT seems decent and overall workman ship is good. This machete has one thing that really set it apart from everything else I have handled, it has a full distal taper starting at the butt of the handle! It goes from roughly 1/8" stock down to about 1/16" at the tip! This makes it so light in hand, very well balanced and giving strength where its needed.
The original shape is classic machete, straight spine and very round belly at the tip. Works well, but I didn't like the looks of it.
You can see the blacked out areas where I will be grinding it down. I went for more of a cutlas shape. I wanted this to be more of a camp tool than strictly a vegetation slasher. Giving it more of a point allows me to drill if needed for making a bow drill to start a fire, the smoothed out belly works well for slicing and skinning as well. Also, the most important part is it just plain old looks cool!
If you look closely, you can see I refined the handle shape a bit too. It was very blocky before. I used bamboo flooring material for the scales, and they were finished with BLO (though they are not finished in the above pic.)
This company is still around and there are several importers, though I don't know if they still have the distal taper. For a little bit of work, I think this is an awesome machete! They don't seem to go for a whole lot of cash on the auction sites, but beware of the "vintage" mark up.
-Xander
The Miartindale Alligator brand is made in England, from a high carbon steel. HT seems decent and overall workman ship is good. This machete has one thing that really set it apart from everything else I have handled, it has a full distal taper starting at the butt of the handle! It goes from roughly 1/8" stock down to about 1/16" at the tip! This makes it so light in hand, very well balanced and giving strength where its needed.
The original shape is classic machete, straight spine and very round belly at the tip. Works well, but I didn't like the looks of it.
You can see the blacked out areas where I will be grinding it down. I went for more of a cutlas shape. I wanted this to be more of a camp tool than strictly a vegetation slasher. Giving it more of a point allows me to drill if needed for making a bow drill to start a fire, the smoothed out belly works well for slicing and skinning as well. Also, the most important part is it just plain old looks cool!
If you look closely, you can see I refined the handle shape a bit too. It was very blocky before. I used bamboo flooring material for the scales, and they were finished with BLO (though they are not finished in the above pic.)
This company is still around and there are several importers, though I don't know if they still have the distal taper. For a little bit of work, I think this is an awesome machete! They don't seem to go for a whole lot of cash on the auction sites, but beware of the "vintage" mark up.
-Xander
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The Martindale machetes are great. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Western Samoa some years ago, the only machetes sold and used were the Martindale Crocodile brand. 
