So the Farmcata is NOT.....

Joined
Aug 18, 2005
Messages
869
A good chopper~I finally got around to testing it on some trees this last week and..well I'll not be doing that anymore!

29vgrbr.jpg


The village Khuk is there for scale and what I used to finish the tree,I got about halfway through and something felt "wrong" so I stopped and looked at the Farmcata's blade:

69ndio.jpg


1t0nbt.jpg


Whoops,seems it's a fine heavy duty machete but a lousy chopper.
I'm not upset I was testing the limits of the knife and found it,I'll just hammer the dint out and run the sharpener over it a bit and it'll work out from there-no big deal,still a great knife.
 
im sorry to hear that happened, sure it will still be a good useable blade for a while to come
 
The steel just rolled so it's fixable,just take a hammer and my vice and tap it flat then run the sharpener over it=good as new.

Now if it had chipped THAT would have sucked,softer steel that rolls and bends is nice as you can fix them fairly easy.
 
Sorry it happened though it doesn't surprise me given the tree diameter. The edge wasn't hard enough. You were right that a chip would have been worse, though even a chip wouldn't be much of a problem to fix if it was that small. If they made the edge harder I would worry about its thin geometry, so I guess they chose the lesser of two evils. A good chopper would need a lot thicker, more convexed edge like an axe.
 
Lemme tell you-the Khuk in the first pic and my Panuti are like psychotic beavers,if your arm can hold out they can (and will) cut it! I've hacked a tree down that was about twelve inches across with the Panuti just to see if I could,my arm was ready to fall off and it took almost an hour but it did it.
 
Oh, I don't doubt it. For jobs that big, I use my long khuks over 23" that I can hold with both hands for control and stamina, that would put some hair on your lumberjack chest :) though I am partial to saws, work smart not hard, unless it's about having some fun.
 
I'd say that your farmcata did not originally have an edge profile optimized for chopping wood.

If wood chopping is what you want to do with the knife, then you should be able to put on an appropriate edge. There's still a lot of steel there.
 
The original edge on my Farmcata looks like a flat grind blade with a total bevel of around 10 degrees (according to my bevel gauge), slightly convexed at.the edge.
 
The Farmcata's edge profile isnt made for dedicated chopping of large tree trunks/branches, it is more suitable for limbing and machete type tasks. As with any blade one must match the task to blade type and profile.
 
Yea I just wanted to see what'd it do against a tree-that villager Khuk looks like it'd suck as an ax but,dammit,you would be shocked at how well it does! so sometimes a blade may look like it's meant for one thing and yet is surprisingly adept at something it's not supposed to do.

And BTW a big thumbs up to the Kamis for getting the heat treat right and not getting the blasted thing too hard,I can fix it just fine and that's a plus (ever had a too hard blade ether chip or snap? fun,hn?) I've dented all my khuks at one time or another on nails,rocks and the like.
 
If the Farmcata is anything like the Farm knife, I can see how the edge could roll with heavy chopping. I couldn't believe how thin the edge was on my FK!
(compared below to my golok kelapa):

GolokKelapaFarmKnife20110327_sm.jpg


I had my reservations about chopping wood at first, but so far, it's actually been a fantastic performer for hacking off small, green limbs and even splitting smaller sections of wood for kindling. It's in the top position with the kelapa for my favourite light-medium duty chopper.

With an edge so slim, at least it's typically easier to make the edge more obtuse to increase its resilience somewhat than it is to thin out a really thick edge to get better penetration.
 
Just did the same thing with my Villager Pen Knife , was doing a small gardening chore cutting a 2 1/2 " inch branch and the darn thing rolled on me ,
hammered it down and went back to work... notified Auntie , if this could be possible kami tempering issue and she said she would look in to it .
 
I hacked down an even BIGGER tree in the last couple of days with the villager khuk,it may be a tempering issue but for most uses the knife is fine so I'll just remember what category to keep it in.

I'm gonna dust off the Panuti today and maybe go chase another tree that needs gone.
 
With an edge so slim, at least it's typically easier to make the edge more obtuse to increase its resilience somewhat than it is to thin out a really thick edge to get better penetration.

Yeah what CS says. I'd rather thicken and thin edge than vice versa.

But did the edge roll or chip? To me it looks like the edge was too brittle and chipped.
 
Yeah, I tried to make a point in my review of my FK awhile back that the edge and tip on these monsters are not designed for heavy wood chopping. They are razor thin. They work wonderfully lopping off limbs and such. However, I really feel that they are almost a more martial-type of knife over a tool. I know that I wouldn't want a lick of an edge that thin, that sharp, and that heavy :eek:
 
Looks like the exact same thing that happened to my 14 inch tram. I hit a branch that had a lot of fatwood in it and rolled just like that. Just too thin of a blade for that kind of wood.
 
Back
Top