Cutlery in Maniago, Italy was founded in 1977 by Oreste Frati and
has long been known as a manufacturer of quality cutlery products for
civilian, military, law enforcement, rescue and other special forces.
However, desiring an American brand for their cutlery, Fox Knives USA
was founded in the U.S. to stratify that desire. And as such, they are a
new company dedicated to designing, manufacturing and distributing high
quality cutlery. To that end, they use only the highest grade stainless
blade steels, along with other high quality handle and sheath materials
to create knives that Americans will feel that they can depend on.
The Fox Knives Parang XL
(which was designed by Alfredo Doricchi) is built using top quality
materials. It features an overall length of 17” with a bull nosed blade
that measures 10 1/4” and is made of 1/8” 440C stainless steel with a 56 Rockwell. In addition, it features a highly ergonomic ABS Plastic handle slabs and a heavy duty nylon sheath.
Two classes of knives I have not yet covered in my articles on this
web site are the Indonesian/Malaysian “Parangs” and the various types of
regional Machetes.
The Parang is a very
useful knife design when combined with a smaller, general purpose or
hunting knife. In this country, we would call such a knife a “camp
knife” but the design of the Parang differs so much from what most
Americans think of as a “camp knife.” It might be hard for some of you
to imagine such a knife in that form to belong in that category.
However, the Parang evolved in the jungles of Indonesia and Malaysia
where the vegetation is very woody (unlike the much softer vegetation
found in the Amazon) as a smaller version of the machete. Thus, the
parang is perfect for light, medium and even heavy chopping tasks since
the entire design of the knife is focused on delivering the most
efficient cut possible with the least amount of effort.
In addition to that, the bull nosed, weight-forward blade with its
positive forward angle is specifically designed to increase the speed of
impact and to deliver extra leverage when driving through the cut. The
negative rearward angle of the tang matches that of the human hand so
that the maximum amount of energy is transmitted to the blade when
chopping with the knife. The blade also features a deep hollow grind
which further increases its cutting ability.
The blade is made from 440C stainless steel which contains
0.95%-1.20% Carbon (makes this a very hard steel,) 16%-18% Chromium
(makes this steel highly corrosion resistant,) 1.0% Manganese (increases toughness and hardenability in steel) and 0.75% Molybdenum (to increase hardness
in tool steels during forging, Mo and Cr forms hard, double carbide
bonds which help improve the abrasion and corrosion resistance of the
steel.) From all of these, you get a blade steel that is a highly
corrosion resistant and is able to hold an edge very well.
Moving on, the handle features a very ergonomic shape while the use
of ABS plastic handle slabs along with a nylon sheath make the entire
knife system nearly impervious to wet environments.
Last, while most of you who read my articles are aware by now that I
like neither ricassos nor choils, on this particular knife, I have a
sneaking suspicion that the choil may actually serve a useful purpose
although, for the life of me, I can’t think of what it would be at the
moment. However, I always listen to my intuition because it has saved my
butt too many times to ignore.
As of the present, I carry a Fox Knives USA Parang XL with me on all
of my fly fishing excursions because it is perfect for chopping loose
the limbs of the trees I always seem to get hung up in and yet, being
made from 440C with a nylon sheath, I don’t have to worry about
immersing it in the stream when I am wading. Also, the Mountain Laurel
bushes we have here are tough as Ironwood and they always seem to
be in the way. Thus, the Fox Parang XL fills the function of a cleaver
quite nicely when I need to make a trail through these tenacious bushes.
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