Developing a fascination with KC Nepal Khukuris

Now there are a load of Khuk´s around on the market. Some are decent, some are of subterranean quality, so to say. And some are legendary, and some deserve to be. In my humble opinion, the folks at the tiny Kathmandu smithy KC Nepal qualify. Talk is cheap.

Watch.

Enjoy.

And find their website here: www.nepalkhukuri.com

Also take note that I am not getting paid to say this, even if some of you may sense a bit of fish odour ;-). But these folks do it with a passion. They burn for what they do, they work hard, under circumstances most European smiths would mock at. People make fun of me because I use salvaged spring steel and other materials and not some heebie-jeebie-goobalahbah unobtanium steels, and they mock at me for using my hammer, my tongs and not much more, they laugh at me because I do not have hundreds and thousands of money to spend on tempering ovens and wuptity controllers ;-).

Fact is, it´s true. I don´t have the money, of course. But that is not all there is. It does not matter. If you don´t understand the passion, the fire and the fierce desire to always get better, you will not understand. I am fascinated by these guys, not because they are the "significant other". Not even by the quality of their knives, nor the bargain prices they offer. Even if I have little money, I would pay more for their work.

I am just a mere hobbyist, an amateur. But these guys do this shit for a living... and still yet, they burn with a fierce passion for their work. Even if I work with simple tools... I cannot even compare to them. It is not in the equipment, it´s in the mastery of the equipment you have.

Those who know me and have followed my blog know that I don´t just do "Tribal knifemaking" as a mere fashion fad (oh, yes, there ARE people around like that), but had the privilege to have had, one must sadly say, several "true" "tribal" knifemakers (they would whack me if they knew I called them thus) as tutors, the late Mielenko Bednarcz from St. Petersburg and Viktor Paukow, a smith from Kazakhstan, who was a tutor of mine from 2004 until 2014, both of which taught me a lot with sparse words, some brawls, a bit of Vodka and a lot of making me watch in awe.It was definitely no formal training I received. What they taught me, first and foremostly, is respect. 

And thusly, it is not that I would not, with a bit of time and preparation, be able to make a knife that would do similar things. It is not that it is about the "product". It is a matter of respect and modesty.

I don´t like the words, but for me it is part of Bushido. I don´t like the words, because they seem not to apply. Maybe you can see it that way: We live on a planet, and there are several different kinds of human beings on it. Some do what they want, some do what they can, and some do what they must, some do whichever is force-fed to them. 

I do not want to define them, because, even if I have the privilege to call Ambar a friend, even though we have never met in actual and most likely never will, which tells a story in itself, I know that we might have many similarities, but that there are differences, too. But this is exactly the point.

Sometimes I feel a bit ashamed of my fellow Westerners. I mean, while of course there are loads of guys and gals doing a really, really great job with so-called "modern equipment", most of the blades they produce go to fatcat, overweight nocturnal predators who would rather cut their own head off with a knife than peeling an onion. A knife somehow has become sort of a fetish, to be polished and admired, but not for actual use, for the rich. And then there are some of those knifemakers, mostly amateurs like me, who as I said sneer at a lack of equipment.

Try this, BSTDs... I doubt most of them would be capable to make a knife like this with modern equipment, let alone with the traditional setup. Don´t get me wrong... there is nothing romantic about forging that way. It´s back-breaking labour.

I know how it is to forge that way. I know how a herniated vertebral disc feels like. Tried that, tickles.

And this is why this will not be the last you have read about KC on my blog. Because they make excellent knives. Because they burn with passion for what they do. And because they fucking deserve it! 

New sheath for my bushcraft knife-and thoughts on Tribal knifemaking

 

So it has been a while coming, and I went for it rather carefully... I had found an old chisel in the woods, which eventually became that bushcraft knife. In the process I had learned it was apparently crucible steel, to be precise, which shows a "Wootz" pattern. To be quite honest, I am not quite sure what to make of that "Wootz" pattern. Petr had looked at some variants of that steel and just said it was due to "uneven carbon distribution". Now that´s a bit of a redundancy, because the dendrite structures in Wootz that are responsible for the pattern also could be called that name.

 

 

Now, it is my personal knife, and I don´t want to sell it. It´s hair-splitting sharp and keeps an edge very well. The shape makes it rather dexterous, and the pattern looks cool to me, so there really is no need to tell.

 

 

Nonetheless, I love this kind of knifemaking a lot. The steel is somewhat "arcane" to me, and the resulting knife more than just a piece of steel with an edge on it. There is an adventure involved in making these things. Chance is, you get crap when you hunt for crap, but sometimes, and more often than not, you can find some right treasures if you look carefully. It is like a hunt.

Now I thought a lot about the sheath, doing some dangler rings and mountings and fittings and putting in a firesteel. But fact is, I have made sheaths like that, and I realized only but recently that there is one real bummer: I just tend not to wear them. So I made a simple sheath that can be worn quite discretely, feels comfy and does not feel like a bag of screws hanging from your belt ;-).

The sheath is quenched in a soda solution in spirit, wet-formed and hot-waxed and treated with violin veneer and then cold-waxed and oil-polished. It feels nearly as firm as Kydex and has a right snap to it. It was somewhat of an experiment, but it worked out fine.

I am still thinking about adding some carving to the handle´s end, or fitting in some silver intarsia, but I am not really sure if it would not foul up a design that´s good as is. But I am still thinking about it. Maybe a little later....;-)

In any case I will keep you posted!

New Bushcraft knife done and being tested

 So this is it - the new blade I made recently, finally completed. Ilkka might not aprove, for there are mosaic pins on it;-), but he was the one who inspired me again. But then I did not simply want to copy his works, I want to keep my honour after all! Also, I am fond of this handle design, and love convex bevels.

 Handle´s curly birch, the spine thickness is about 5 mm. The blade is made from x75CrSi spring steel, forged to final shape. You can still see it in the rough spine. The blade is of course selectively tempered.

 And another angle. I am currently finding out what works best in a bush beast and it is rewarding to simply try out. I offset the angle of the handle a bit to aid in chopping and hard whittling tasks.

For starters, I carved this flower out of some aged birch twig lying around not doing anything. Worked quite well, but I was not overly fond of it, so I redid the bevel already.

Edge retention seems to be on the spot, but there will be some severe tests coming on. Above is a little vid of how I test the tip strength. I also did some chopping and the edge came out well enough, although the temper is fading a bit towards the handle, but as is, it performs well enough. Quenching wasn´t so easy, for I did it in solid lard, and due to the offset handle I could not get it in deep enough, so I put a block of lard (actually frying fat) on the tub and drew the blade through. As is, I like it, but there´s still room for improvement. Watch this place for more tests!