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! 

On the bench: A new dangler sheath for my little sica

 Yesterday I mustered some resolve and got to work on a sheath for a knife that had been lying around in my workshop-turned-attic-turned-home-turned workshop ;-). The knife, a nearly accurate replica inspired by several finds from the Daco-Getian iron age (https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fa/74/c7/fa74c7ce0827111670d94ee08afc1e12.jpg and https://i.pinimg.com/564x/0e/c6/d8/0ec6d888ce524ff55b7cb4d620012bfa.jpg, just to name a few) had to help in making the sheath, and its performance in leatherworking was a big surprise to me. The dangler is handforged out of mild steel, and yes, the stitching DID see some rework... ;-)

 The sickle shape with the tiny, but pronounced tip makes for a very effective cutter. It gathers up the material like a claw and also makes for a very precise cut when cutting small curves. To make a sheath which was not overly huge but big enough to accomodate the shape was a pain in the arse, but turned out well enough considering my lack of practice.

 I must admit I am quite irrationally fascinated by this type of knife. It has a history as a peaceful farming tool and a herbalist´s knife and was an insign of the Mithraic mysteries and therefore of Roman state religion as well as a deadly weapon of the same back-alley cut-throats the Roman empire was so afraid of. In Romania, the sica continues to have a prominent symbolism in the stories of the Strígoi, the fairies of the land, and it was a Sica used to combat the vampires of of Transsylvanian local legends. In Stoker´s "Dracula" it became a Khukhuri that ended the vampire prince´s life, but the differences are marginal.

 It models the shape of the hunter´s moon´s crescent and all the spiritual aspects of its mythology as well as being a most formidable everyday tool. I daresay it is this ambivalence that adds to its fascination. It tells stories in itself, and I like that.

The blade, then is made from a stainless material I found in the woods, under a crescent moon, of course ;-). It is rich with Cobalt, and after a very conservative selective quench and temper came out so hard that it carves a Roselli UHC Wootz blade while retaining an astonishing degree of flexibility. I estimate it at about 62-63HRC. It does not take that fine an edge (yet), and I am still figuring out what the best edge angle might be. At the moment it shaves, but I feel there can be still more performance gotten out of it... we´ll see. It worked the leather well enough, better than most tools I bought for that task, and I could not ask for more! It seems to be some HSS steel or something along the lines, and there seems to be quite a fair amount of Chromium in the steel. It came out stainless out of the ground and takes no patina even after 72 hours in a salt-vinegar-citric acid solution that stains even 440B after 24 hours. Fact is, I don´t know what it is, and the culprit is, I need not know what it is. I did all the tempering intuitively, and it turned out well enough.

I am currently writing a local mythology and, doing some research, found that a sickle played a prominent role in local fairy legend as well. One could easily say that it is a fairy knife... and this, adding to the fact that I found the steel in the woods, adds to the mystique of the atmosphere... ;-)

This, originally was what I wanted to express with my knifemaking; the gift of the other world made flesh. The wonder that waits in the ordinary, for there are few things more profane than a rotten, rusty piece of scrap metal... and yet, from the most mundane, and in the most profane situation lurks a world that is deeper, darker and most profound. It is the realm of legends and fairy tales, of myth ad wonder and awe... there life and death are not antagonists, but aspects of the same coin.  It is the realm of intuition, and I loe to wader there for no reason but my amazement how beautiful this creation and all its creatures are- all of them.

From the flames a raven

 

 ...is born.

 A Celto-Dacian sickle loosely inspired by a find in Varna (after Georgieva 1992)

Made from some crucible steel I found in the woods, I just forged it out because I wanted a sickle for harvesting herbs and because I wanted to know how versatile the design would be. In China sickles are used for just about everything from harvesting to shaving. Viktor, the Kazakhian senior blacksmith in the Bethaus smithy, also used a sickle for woodworking, harvesting, mushroom hunting and much more than I´d care to mention. Likewise I would think of a use of these  historical knives. For iron, and steel, were precious, and the tools at hand were put up to multiple uses to save resources. When you look at the original, you can see that it has a relatively short tang, which looks like a full tang. Since the blade is some 10 cm long and the handle just some 5-8cm it can be argued that this is the case either to save steel or because there was some law to be abided by. I could not find anything about this. What is safe to say, however, that this sickle type was a variant of the famed sica of Dacian provenience.

The sica gained fame as an everyday tool as well as the weapon of choice of back-alley cut-throats. Also, there are implications that smaller versions were used as kitchen knives in the Roman empire. This would not have been the case if those blade shapes, albeit with a more pronounced tip, were not practical. With ùlenklawe,

 

I found out that it gives you an almost frightening amount of purchase when cutting and slashing while still providing the possibility to do precise cutting such as dicing onions and stuff. It cuts 1.5 cm branches in one go! It was modelled after the knife in the picture second from below:

 

(source: archive.worldhistoria.com)

 

I am thinking about making a more accurate reconstruction of the sica found at Varna, but for starters, I look forward to just testing the general cutting capabilities of the knife I just made.

 

In any case, I fear you have not read the last of this style of knife... ;-)