Description
Blade: 18″
Handle: 7″
Spine Thickness at Bolster: 6.5mm
Total Weight: 900g
Have you ever been using a machete to cut through brush and have it get embedded in some miniscule finger width branch? You remove it and try to chop again but end up embedded so deeply that you have to twist the blade to get it loose? Then it bends the edge because the steel is so thin and soft?
At Kailash blades, we’ve never had any of these issues, because we don’t make machetes. We make Bush Swords. Enter the Expedition Cleaver.
All the speed and cutting efficieny of a machete but with more power, more durability, more utility. More everything.
The Expedition Cleaver is the Bush Cleaver’s longer, leaner and maybe just a liiiiittle bit meaner brother. It uses the same concept of a thick spine and a very steep full flat primary grind but to achieve different goals. The Expedition Cleaver more or less aims to emulate the same weight and balance as a heavy machete while delivering all round superior performance. The 5mm thick spine offers more rigidity and durability during chopping, batoning and other rough use, while the full flat grind offers more fluid, jam free cutting without substanially increased blade weight.The primary grind is backed up by a sturdy convex secondary grind to give the kind of durability you’d expect from Kailash blades while also minimising cutting resistance at the edge.
It sports a long flat section for easy carving and push cutting, while still maintaining a massive, gently curving belly for excellent cleaving dynamics while chopping. The tip is raised in line with the handle and elongated to give a devastating point while the entire spine and handle are tapered dramatically for better stress distribution and a finely tuned balance. The entire blade is stretched out and tweaked to give reduced weight and more tip speed for laying waste to light flexible brush while still maintaining enough power and durability for impressive chopping power. The Expedition Cleaver also features a finger choil, which allows the user to place their hand directly above the usable edge for fantastic leverage when carving and performing push cuts (available to be left out upon ordering).
The Expedition Cleaver has a particularly agile balance for a chopper. While it can be used for fine work and carving, it absolutely excels as both a brush clearer and a chopper, acting as a well balanced midpoint between knife, machete and hatchet.
As with so many of our larger blades, the Expedition Cleaver features an oversized handle, a very oversized one in this case. This allows those of you out there with massive gorilla paws or who routinely work with gloves to still manage a comfortable grip, while also allowing for a huge range of potential hand positions. Choke up to the front in the index finger notch or finger hole and the handle balances out some of the weight of the blade, giving this blade a tad more delicacy in fine work like carving and food prep. After that you can slide further and further back to get more and more power out of the blade until you reach the flared pommel. At this point you have maximum retention for minimum effort and the chopping power is enough to take down saplings in a blink and have a damn good crack at whatever else you can find. You can potentially even squeeze part of another hand in the mix for even more control and power. The full tang handle features a tapered, annealed tang, which is sandwiched by two rosewood scales that are smooth and nicely ovalised, giving a consistent grip along the entire length in any possible grip style.
So let’s look at our previous situation and swap out the machete for the expedition cleaver. You swing through some brush and hit a finger width branch. The blade refuses to recognise its existence and soars on regardless. It feels good. You take another swing a foot further up the branch where it’s an inch thick and it once again slides on through with a deeply satisfying ring. It feels very, very good. You continue to chop further and further up the tree, becoming increasingly frantic and obsessed. At some point the tree is nothing but a stump so you move on to the next tree, then the next tree then the next tree, then your wife leaves you and takes the house so you make a house out of your ammased wood pile. You focus your sorrow into your work and dedicate life to chopping down trees, with your house growing larger and larger as the months go by. Eventually there are no trees left and you begin suffocate inside your enormous wooden fortress, holding your expedition cleaver tightly against your rapidly slowing chest. As the light slowly fades from your eyes, a thought crosses your mind.
God this thing is so much better than a Machete.
Before Purchase, please read through our section on Warranty and Factory Seconds for information on the different grind types, tang options and how they affect the level of warranty we offer.