There are some good quality short blades out there for decent prices. Martindale machetes come to mind. There's also the new Cold Steel "Bowie" machete (see below). The version with 18" blade is $30. Add a cross/nagel, wood scales/rivets and a messer pommel. Does that do the job or do you have only a Messer-Like Object? The blade of the CS is 3mm thick, which strikes me as being outside the range of what I'd expect for a true messer (too thin). Other problems include the secondary bevel. But just in general, what do y'all think of this possibility? Is 18" too short? 3mm too thin?

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I've got a Martindale blade I've been working on again off again (more off than on. . . :( ) I figured would work well for just such a purpose. The biggest things I've got concerns over are the placment of the holes drilled for the original grip slabs and the shape and offset of the tang - straightening it and squaring the shoulders would take off a lot of metal for something intended to be the full width of the grip slabs.

In any case, I would recommend the Martindale blades as something to play with - very lively even with just a couple of grip slabs.

Weird I was telling a friend today about doing that. I have a real piece of junk machete from Wal-Mart for $7. it would really be just to practice polishing and hilting but still it’s not a bad idea if you have a quality machete and not enough time to forge or grind the blade.

I've been considering turning my machette into a fulschun -- has the blade shape, but not sure if it's long enough.

M.

I've thought about doing this too, but I wonder if there's any distal taper to messers. Something I don't know messers; most machetes I've seen don't vary in blade thickness at all. How do you propose fixing the cross to the machete? Well, if it be similar to messer or no, it'd surely make an interesting machete.

Regarding distal taper and machetes, although many don't have any variation in blade thickness, the blades from Martindale do. I checked out some info on their web site (and can confirm visually on my particular blade). Again, really worth checking out for this kind of project :cool: