Never being one to shirk an opportunity, I found myself in the generally unique position of: 1. Being on a Scouting camping trip; 2. Having a Scrapyard knife with me, and 3. Having a machete (someone else’s) in the same location. Two of those things are always a given, but rarely are all three. The boys were pre-occupied with the tasks at hand and being supervised by other adult leaders off site.

That being said, I took it upon myself to put on an impromptu chopping test to compare the Regulator with an unusual machete. Now, I was part of the Test Team for the Regulator, and I did, in fact, test it out, however I was not as forthcoming with a report as I should have been. Be that as it may, I will submit to you now an interesting test of the military overrun Regulator. I had an active SF colonel along as well as a few retired SF guys, and they were all drooling over the Regulator. Admiring it for it’s true fighter balance and function, they were were envious.

The material chosen was a 3-3.5” (about 2-2.5’ long) piece of dried Southern Live Oak (I am just gonna call it live oak). Now, boys, if you have never seen or heard of live oak, you cannot fully appreciate its density and overall strength. It is so strong that a lot, if not most, of the old wooden sailing ship structures were constructed from its wood. A point of historical discussion; the USS Constitution, was fitted with Southern Live Oak not only in its frame, but in its 25” thick sides as well. This is what earned the ship its nickname of “Old Ironsides”. When the 18lb English cannonballs simply bounced off her sides the Brit sailors would comment that the ship must be made of iron. (http://www.history.navy.mil/ussconstitution/history.html) .

The Regulator I used was the military overrun model that I ordered as soon as they were available. The machete was one that one of our Scout leaders had acquired in Africa many years ago. He said that the local tribesmen used them for any and everything, and that he simply had to have one. He traded them appropriately for one of their local tools. It is a heavy, blunt tipped model with no discernable maker's mark. It is, in my opinion, much too heavy for continual line clearing as we regularly have to do in Land Surveying, but that is an entirely different discussion.

We commenced to beating on the live oak. Yes, beating is the proper word here. The wood is just really dense and hard. To keep things on a relatively even keel, neither the Regulator nor the machete had been sharpened. The machete was edge chipped, and dull, not having been sharpened in many moons. The Regulator had a somewhat used factory edge. Neither had any edge advantage over the other on this wood.

Here is the wood:



After ten strikes each:
Machete:

Regulator:


After twenty five strikes each (Regulator [left] Machete [right]) :



After fifty, the Machete broke though: The Regulator, was far from finished:





The initial strikes were done by a fellow Scout leader (his machete), and when the machete went through, he was done. I took over to work with the Regulator. I administered another sixty five blows and did not quite get through. Honestly, slinging that little blade against that log about wore me out… I am not as young as I once was. I could have, however, gotten through the log a lot faster than my friend did with the machete… He was not connecting on the log with the sweet spot of the machete for that chopping chore.

Here is where I quit chopping. I guess I could have broken through with another 10 hits or so:



Onwards... the blade of the Regulator showed no damage at all… the coating was, of course, a little smoothed.



It even cut some paper quite readily….



And then after a proper wash up… cut up the night’s feast…



The machete would have never done that.
Short but simple, the Regulator is some piece of steel. I wouldn’t want to chop a lot with it, but I could if I had to. A true testament to the strength that is Scrap Yard Knives..

No batoning.. Those of you that know of me, know I don’t treat my knives in that way, but that conversation is best left for another time… To each his own.

Doc