The standard parang sold in Malaysia comes without a sheath.
Carving out a wooden sheath for your parang is a satisfying and fun thing to do, but if you are arriving from abroad you may not have the time or ability to do this before your trip. In this video-post I will show you how to make a suitable sheath for your machete using readily available materials that you can easily salvage (or buy) – and which won’t take you more than 20 minutes to do.
Although the end result may not look quite as nice as a wooden sheath it is arguably more functional and, more-and-more, I see Orang Asli (the native people of Malaysia) using this type of sheath rather than the traditional wooden ones.
I have added a few emergency items to the sheath (a Falkniven sharpening stone, 30ft paracord, a lighter and some cable ties) and I’ll show you why these particular items are important enough to carry-all-the-time, and test how they stand up to some heavy use, in later articles.
For those of you who prefer using natural materials/techniques, fear not! – this morning I began the project to make a parang handle and sheath using traditional methods and materials and I’ll post that up in the next day or so.
I bot several of 2 types of sheaths, the USGI and a universal nylon type, and attached a leather dangle to them making them quite nice to use. The Maylia parang I got works good in the USGI sheath that is thick, yet pliable nylon. This sheath also has the built in sharpener. Very happy with it.
Those sheaths sound good – I have the ones used by the British Military and they are probably very similar. Nice and light. The main modification I make now is to put in a thin metal strip (bent in half) to protect the sheath from the parang blade when it’s drawn – worth doing as otherwise they get frayed quite fast.
Cheers!
Paul