Making a Pirate Cutlass from a Machete

In today's video we are challenging Alex, from the YouTube channel Outdoors55, to a short sword build off. We went and visited Alex in his shop, and brought him a Colombian military surplus machete. We discussed the challenge and collaboration, and decided that we would both make short swords for the other, film our builds, and then exchange those swords later, filming the exchange and cutting demos.

This turned out to be quite fun and challenging in many ways. Briefly, after the machete exchange, the world ran into a wall called Covid19. Devon and I put the making on hold during our own lock down in MD, and so did Alex in PA. We both have lots of responsibilities outside of making YouTube content, and unfortunately, those things had to take precedent.

We were able to get back on the horse and continue making our short sword. We decided to go with the Pirate Cutlass, living on the Chesapeake Bay here in MD, and my history with sailboat racing since I was in high school in 1999. I drew up a few designs and started shaping the profile of the blade. I then moved on to creating, texturing, and hammer shaping the wrap around guard out of a broken cymbal, and then grinding and shaping the pommel out of a large bolt from my metal scrap bin. I made the handle out of Black Walnut, stacked and fitted with 3 pieces of the cymbal, and glued everything together. I did have to go back and add some glue and dowels running through the cymbal metal to ensure a secure glue up, after the first popped apart when shaping. I then did the final shaping and notching on the tang to fit the pommel, and finessed the guard, handle, and pommel to ensure all three fit together cleanly. I glued everything up with two part epoxy, and peened the end of the tang over the pommel to create a secure mechanical hold to work in combination with the glue. Then I moved on to the final sharpening, moving up through progressive belt grits on my grinder, and finishing with a stropping belt and white compound.

I'm really happy with how this Pirate Cutlass turned out, and am excited to give this to Alex. If you want to see our cut test video, go over and encourage Alex to get crackin, and finish his short sword. If your watching in the future, go check out his video of his sword build on Outdoors55, and our exchange and cut test video.

Here is a link to Alex's channel, Outdoors55:    / outdoors55  

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