5-Star Review: DK015 Hooyman Machete With Ergonomic No-Slip Handle
By User: FinalGirl_7
Let me immediately say that I am not happy about this rating. I wanted nothing more than to be able to sit here and bash this machete, but ultimately I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It arguably ruined my life, but its performance while doing so was a showcase of proper design.
This machete appeared to be what I was looking for (and later proved to be what someone else was apparently looking for as well). I have been doing some landscaping at my uncle’s getaway cabin and wanted something that could handle thick brush. There is an abandoned summer camp in the same area as the cabin, and the foliage there has become badly overgrown due to no groundskeeper being around for seemingly more than a single week. While I don’t know why they can’t seem to keep someone employed, I do know their weeds had finally reached my uncle’s property line and I had convinced him to let me stay there under the pretense that I’d be clearing up all the fence lines as well as doing some other lame general upkeep stuff.
The machete was lightweight and seemed fine. I didn’t actually do any work with it. I just kind of opened it and took it outside. I honestly wasn’t planning to do much cutting at all and had only bought the dang thing to buy myself some time before my uncle started wondering why nothing was getting done. To make it look like it’s been used, I stuck the machete into a nearby tree stump and left it. Then I started getting ready for what I had really come to the cabin to do… throw a killer party! I had invited a full group, but we all knew I was really just looking for an excuse to hang out with Brad.
While sitting around the campfire with my friends, I noticed the stump was empty, no machete in sight. I remember thinking it odd since machetes aren’t supposed to disappear, especially only hours after taking them out of the packaging. I now, of course, know that this was not some sort of defective product but instead user error as I never should have left the machete sitting out like that. Regardless, I quickly put it out of my mind as hot Brad was about to tell us all a spooky story about some six-foot-nine muscular boy who had died in these woods years ago and still haunts them today. Perfect flirting time.
My night got dramatically worse in a hurry, not completely coincidentally at the same time that I was able to actually review and admire the machete. I am going to do my best to put my own personal horrors aside for the sake of an accurate product review. Its first big use was when Joe and I were looking for his girlfriend, Vanessa. Vanessa, like a few of our other friends (some of them just friends of friends, really), had disappeared throughout the night after wandering off by herself. Joe was just starting to say that he thinks something might be up when the machete blade burst through the front of his chest. It appeared that a masked murderer had snuck up behind him and rammed it through.
My life changed forever in that moment. Whatever innocence once inside me was exorcised instantly. However, even with blood spray in my eyes I could tell that I was looking at a blade far more impressive than I had originally perceived.
Carbon steel, with a thin, but razor-sharp blade. It went through Joe’s chest cavity with very little resistance. If you want to ensure you get a machete that will be refined without you having to grind it yourself, this is an excellent starter blade. Right as Joe looked down (maybe also to admire?), the killer then pulled it upwards, splitting his top half mostly in half. While more horrified and disgusted than I’d ever felt in my entire life, I still noticed that the blade has a nice flexibility. It was able to wiggle a touch and then snap back into place, without suffering any kind of permanent bend. I’m openly weeping as I see Joe being split every time I shut my eyes, but I think it’s important to tell you that this spring-like steel frame will ultimately make this one of the more durable machetes you’ll find in this price range.
As I ran for my life I ended up running right into, you guessed it, Brad. He looked so cute, all panicked and shaking. We stumbled into each other right over Vanessa. She was laying outside the toolshed (I remember now she was going to get a flashlight because the power had unexpectedly shut off in the cabin. Not sure if Uncle didn’t pay his electric bill or what). She had an electric saw of some kind stuck in her back, but I’ll spare you the gory details since we aren’t here to talk saws (I already shared quite a bit on my DeWalt multi-charge battery power saw 2300 review).
After a horrible but wholly romantic chase, Brad and I finally had our moment. He had just stuck a fire poker through the killer’s eye and he was telling me that “everything is going to be okay, it’s all over now.” I imagine the next thing would have been “do you want to go to the movies next weekend, like on a date,” but we’ll never know since the masked hater of love jumped back up right on cue. With two swings he cut both of Brad’s arms off (so much for holding me during Venom). Then the killer decapitated Brad. I was screaming my lungs out at this point.
The swiftness of his attack made me think about the overall strength of the machete. The website said it could cut through branches up to the thickness of your wrist. I estimate that’s roughly equal to going through bone. A very impressive power for sure. Grade A in the generating power department.
Fast forward to a massive scramble and I also learned that the rubberized grip on the machete makes it easy to hold on to. At least, I assumed so since it took being kicked over a balcony and falling two stories for the large man to drop it. When I realized he wasn’t dead, I grabbed the machete myself (I bought it, after all. Well, my uncle did but whatever!). I could instantly confirm that the ergonomic grip did make it comfortable to hold.
I will say that in that hectic moment I felt like the machete was a little big, making it slightly unwieldy to use. BUT as I swung and missed multiple times, hitting rocks by accident, it didn’t chip. Talk about built to last.
As the killer ran at me I extended the machete outward and he impaled himself on it. For some reason this finally kept him down (I went ahead and lit his body on fire and then threw his ashen corpse back into the lake just for good measure). While I try not to put any personal biases or emotional reasoning into my reviews, I can’t help it this one time. This machete saving my life easily outweighed its slight awkwardness to swing at another person.
The second I hitchhiked out of that godforsaken town I hopped on to write this review just in case anyone else was in the market for a good brush-clearing tool. While I can’t condone the horrible brutalities that were committed with it, I also can’t lie to the general public about its quality. If you need a nice middle-of-the-pack machete that won’t break the bank, but might break some branches, this is the one for you.
4-Star Product Review: DK015 Hooyman Machete With Ergonomic No-Slip Handle
By User: ManOfTheLake
I LOVE this machete. I wasn’t even in the market when I stumbled onto this baby and it was too much of a steal to pass up. The blade is thin but not flimsy. Will likely rust quickly if left covered in moisture like dew, sap, or blood, so you’ll want to keep it wiped down. It’s a long blade, around 24” and it is perfect for me, but I am a larger-framed person, at around 6’8″ and 245 pounds of muscle, hanging flesh, and lake water. A smaller-statured person may want to drop down to a 22” or a 19” for an easier swing path.
Overall I am very pleasantly surprised by this machete. There was ONE moment in particular though where I was not a fan of it. After a small fall and dropping the machete onto the ground nearby, it was picked up by…