Trail Working Tools

[Jim Cook]

I hope that this is the correct place to tell about this, but I just had to share.

Having worked enduros and hare scrambles since 1980, and having made trails much longer than that, I have used a wide variety of tools to cut brush and small trees out of the trail.

I use a pair of rose shears to clip hanging vines and small unsupported limbs.
I've used an assortment of machetes of many different configurations, and I've even custom made tools. I've used pocket saws. Hell, I've used ditch bank blades (Carl called it a "sling blade".) and chain saws.

The best (until relatively recently) tool I have had for this use is one I made by taking the handle of a ditch bank blade and cutting it down to make it fit a modified machete blade. This gave me a "two handed long reach cutting tool" that I could attach to the bike with a scabbard I made from heated and flattened 2" plastic gas line pipe.

Well, about a year ago, a club member I was working trail with showed up with a tool I hadn't seen before. It was called a "Combination Axe Machete" and made by Myerco. I didn't think too much about it until I observed my buddy lopping off limbs and cutting saplings easier than I could do with my two handed machete.
I asked him if I could look at it and was even more impressed.

The combination axe machete (machete axe) looks like a shorter than normal machete on first impression. It has a closed loop grip. The blade is only 12" long, which gives it an overall length of about 18". What made this machete different was the weight. It was not heavy enough to be tiresome, but it was heavier than a normal machete. Upon further examination, I saw that the "back" of the blade was over 1/4" thick.

This is some serious machete!

I have since bought four of them.
Two of them were bought off me when another trail working club member would "try it and then had to have it".
A third is somewhere on the Bear Creek Cycle Trail; lost when I forgot I was carrying it and started having too much fun riding my GasGas.
The fourth machete axe has been in regular use (by me) for most of this year, since I lost the other in February.

They really are that good.

There is only one drawback. They are short enough that they can bounce out of the scabbard if the scabbard tilts while you are bouncing over rocks and roots on your dirt bike.

They are more expensive than the run of the mill cheap machete, but there is no comparison between those and the machete axe when I am using them. I paid $27.99 for the first two, which I bought at Gander Mountain. Since then, Gander Mountain no longer sells them. I bought the last two at a hunting/gun shop for the retail price of $29.95.
Meyerco has a patent on these, so no other company is able to produce them.
Well, just today, I found them on Amazon.com at a discounted price of $22.23, and saw that if I ordered two, I could get free shipping. That's two of them for only $11 more than I paid for one, once the sales tax was added in to the price on that one.

If you spend as much time cutting brush, limbs, and saplings as I do, this is well worth the money.
Here is a link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...A2XFEUWBL995XF

Good Riding and Trail Working to You All!
Jim


.