– **Design[edit]**
– Characterized by a hardwood handle
– Features a full tang
– Has a deep blade
– Contains a hook at its tip for picking up cut cane
– Blade is usually 1 millimeter thick and over 12 inches long
– **Gallery[edit]**
– Sugar cane knife from the 1800s used by enslaved Africans in the Danish West Indies
– 1888 drawing of Queen Mary Thomas holding a cane knife during the 1878 Fireburn riot
– Image of a sugar cane cutter in Cuba during zafra
– Canecutters in Ayr, Australia circa 1907
– Female cane cutters in Barbados in 2011
– **See also[edit]**
– Kukri
– Golok
– Bolo knife
– **References[edit]**
– Hanson, Beth (1996). Chapter 3 – Tools & Techniques: Chemical-free Weed Controls.
– Invasive Plants: Weeds of the Global Garden. Brooklyn Botanic Garden. p.14. ISBN978-0-945352-95-2
– Ek Commando Knife Co.
– EKA
– Emerson Knives
– **Categories**
– Filipino swords
– Machetes
– History of sugar
– Knife stubs
– Hidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2012, All stub articles.
A cane knife is a large hand-wielded cutting tool similar to a machete. Its use is prevalent in the harvesting of sugarcane in dominant cane-growing countries such as Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Australia, South Africa, Ecuador, Cuba, Jamaica, the Philippines and parts of the United States, especially Louisiana and Florida, as well as Hawaii. It is the primary tool used in countries that do not employ mechanical means for harvesting cane.
In the Philippines, particularly in Negros Island, itinerant sugarcane cutters called sacadas employ this blade, which they call an espading. The term is borrowed from the Spanish word espada, meaning "sword", while in Tagalog it is called palang. In the South Pacific, the metal hook of the cane knife was melded with the indigenous serrated warclub, resulting in the hook-bladed weapon used in modern Samoan fire knife dancing.[citation needed]