I found the red spacers interesting. When I lived in the Amazon, the custom there was for folk to make their own machetes out of truck leaf springs. They liked to use PVC pipe to make handles. They favored the softness in the handle, and also that PVC came in different colors so they could do what the red spacers to here. The most common ones were white handles with blue spacers. In general, folk seemed to favor shorter handmade machetes than you see in films, some little longer than carving knives. Not sure why, I liked mine with a 22" blade.

For many folk, a machete and an axe were all they had of civilized material goods, so they were pretty important.