4 broken khukuris

Status
Not open for further replies.
I can believe that there will be flaws in handmade items (like HI Khukuris) everyone once and a while, and I can possible accept that someone could end up with multiple, but this I can't believe:

That British Army Service was bought in 1999 on a market in Khatmandu in Nepal. It cost only 1 US dollar and it has outlived and outperformed all the Himalayan Imports khukuris that I ever took into real use. The Himalayan Imports cost from 125 to 150 dollars each. Every time my Himalayan Imports khukuris failed the British Army Service stepped in and took over the job. It has endured more working hours than all the broken khukuris together - and the steel of that British Army Service is stainless steel.
Click to expand...

BTW, have you taken this up with UB? I know he stands behind his products 100%.
 
sorry to see this Rene,
Have you spoken to Bill about it?

IMHO The gelbo special failed partly because too much metal is taken out in the middle of the blade with that hieght & size of tang, probably tempering was less than perfect to.

The others broke because, the extended tang hidden under the habaki bolster!

If HI want to keep thier reputation, it would be a good idea to go back to traditional bolsters, the shorter the better.

Basic design fault that allows time saving shortcuts by piece work kamis.

Spiral

Ps. Due you want to sell that $1 tourist special? ;) :D
 
Refund on the way. Link to this thread on the way to BirGorkha.

Khukuris shipped around Thanksgiving last year -- a month or six weeks after Dasein. We get these type failures, 4 to 6 usually, during every Dasein season. Can't be fixed.
 
What more could a consumer ask for?:D Good business as usual, Uncle Bill:)


~Jake
 
I use mine as working tools all the time. Occasionally mistakes are made and a flawed one will slip through. But if I broke four in a row, I'd have to stop and ask myself if I was using the proper tool for the task at hand. Either way Uncle Bill will do right by you.
 
I broke three in a row.
Not catastrophic, but real edge failure.


I'd ask Cliff Stamp and Hollow about use. And Rag and myself. I don't use my khuks day in and day out- but during wood cutting season might, and take on everything from hardened sap wood, to aged, to green. Several hours a day occurs during cutting season, but it is more likely about 2 hours every other day. Trees range in size from 5" to 12" diameter. I limb too. Just bust through the wood, smashing the limbs.

I would observe that a BAS can in no way deliver the kind of force the larger blades can. It is not in the cards.

I have a HI Villager that's seen a lot of use, and I don't think the metal is as good as some of my regular HI khuks.

I was unable to view the pictures. ARe the failures tang related?


munk
 
OK- I just saw the picts- right where Yvsa and others theorized if there was a failure it would be.

munk
 
Hello everybody! Thank you very much for all your responses.

Thank you Raghorn. I have surfed here for quite some time but I don´t post.

I think I will be posting here just now shortly as long as this thread is going on. If I can contribute while I am here on other threads then I will do that.


=========================


Spiraltwista, sorry pal, that special BAS stays with me. It is a kind of magic BAS you see and it only works well in my hands....

Uncle Bill, since you are sending this thread to BirGorkha, do you wish me to make an internet page with the other ones that failed too? They were shipped to me in the same time period I think. It was a 30 inch Sirupati that bent, and a 16,5 inch WW2 who´s edge at the sweet spot rolled over to the side. If you want the kamis to take a look at those too I will put up the pics for you.

In my opinion the 30 inch Sirupati was not a failure. It is just that it is a too long and slender thing for chopping down apple trees. It should be classified as the 25 Kobra - a khuk never intended for chopping.

Uncle Bill, again, why can I not have the two 20 inch Kobras as a trade? You told me in the e-mail that you think I will break them too. But if I relieve you of all responsibility, why not? What is your reason?

Munk, you are right. The BAS doesn´t experience as much stress on the tang as longer heavier khukuries. It is unfair to compare my BAS with these khuks so I am going to take if off the internet page that I made.

How does Uncle Bill calculate the rate of failure?
It could be that the failure rate is underrated because people tend to use them for backyard fun more than REAL work. A failure rate should be calculated from the number of khukuris brought into REAL use and not from the actual number of khukuris sold.

I see you use your khukuris quite well Munk.

====================


I suppose I should mention to you all that about a year ago (I don´t remember quite when) when I broke two and bent two Uncle Bill banned me as a customer. He said I was the type that would break anything I get my hands on. I guess it was because I destroyed two in the same day. And the other two in just a couple of weeks I think.

I don´t understand why I broke any of them. I am not a big strong guy. I shouldn´t be able to break khuks. Bigger guys than me don´t break them.

Even though I am surprized about breaking even two more now then I guess Uncle Bill is not.

And now he told me that nobody ever broke 4 khukuris. New record, wow...
 
Rene, I broke three during the Maoist uprising- a period of fear and poor attention by the Kamis. First one during a couple minutess- and then broke the relief package sent to fill in for the first. Another several weeks later, but it was a dent.

I need to ask what is going on in your farm that so much manual labor is done by khuk? I want to ask this carefully because I do not wish to shoot the messenger of bad news. I have a chain saw to buck the trees. During the 'off' season, I cut firewood for fun with khuks, but you can bet if it were 20 below and I needed wood fast I'd use the saw. Time is expensive- there just isn't the time to use the khuks every day all day.

I say this, but I know and believe a HI khuk should be able to work all day long on a farm.
If there is a weakness because of the bolsters we need to know- or if it is seasonally related to the event Bill mentioned.

You know, there are ways to break anything. My khuks have taken a lot of abuse- the learning curve was very hard on them. How about slamming one flat too often?

But I work them until they are warm with friction. I pound them. I've been guilty of using more force than the blade can actually cut- a flaw in my technique I've begun to improve upon. I am not a 'strong man' , but I am hard on myself and tools.

I'm glad you agree with my observation regarding the BAS. In truth, a poor BAS might outlast a larger longer khuk with a flaw. And no, I would not have used a long sirupati to cut down trees. I probably wouldn't use a Gelbu special either, but I did take my chitlangi and cut down a tree.

But an AK failed on you. And a WWll.

munk
 
You know, I've been thinking more about this. If I took a shovel and slammed it as hard as I could over and over onto resistive, rock impregnated earth, it would break. I can't think of any tool that couldn't be broken. I've seen MT bike frames broken. Snap on tools break. I've a rock hammer I could break if I wanted to break it.

I've stripped a lot of bolts in my day.

So, this case is interesting. But I gotta go by what my own arms have told me over the last 2 years, that my khuks have been pounded, often unfairly, and have given great service.

You would not wish to be re-incarnated into my Villager, I tell you. It has hammer marks on it. The handle cracked. The blade has gone slab sided on impact and every which way you could guess. It batters thick limbs apart during the delimbing of a felled tree- which it also usually cut.

I don't recall which blade did this, but one huge tree we cut had a seam of pure hardened sap in it. You could only make small lines in this material no matter how hard you struck. I became possessed and cut this part of the tree in two. I used the shavings for a couple years as firestarters.

munk
 
munk said:
I need to ask what is going on in your farm that so much manual labor is done by khuk?
Click to expand...

I am writing from 3. world, Chile, South America. I traveled here from Norway to create a farm together with my father.

The farm is not operational yet. The farm is in the making. We are buying land, clearing forest and planting olive trees at this moment.

The chopping of eukalyptus that is now taking place is not much. It is a small patch that will only take 3-5 days. There is something strange with the chain saw and I don´t want to use it. It will take longer time to get the chain saw fixed than cutting the trees with a khuk - because we are in the Latino 3. world. And besides, I am waiting for a tractor to show up and have nothing to do in the meantime... The tractor should have been here some days ago already but Chile is veeery slow... So slow that a Norwegian cannot predict anything her, much less understand anything.

Previously when I broke the Gelbu I was planting olive trees. I needed to cut bamboo, cut weeds, shuffle sand away from the desired place to plant the olive tree in the ground and then wedge a whole in the ground with the Gelbu, and hammer the bamboo down carefully for marking the olive tree. This is the fastest way of planting olive trees, to do it all with a khuk I mean.
 
If I were Bill's lawyer, which I am not, I would advise him not to sell you any more khukuris. You are obviously capabable of breakng them and documenting the breakage You do not document the use you put them to, and it is statistically provable that your results are idioisyncratiitc. I think you are a malicious troll, in fact, a person who is trying to cause economic harm to a friend of mine. I'd be happy to meet you in person and concuct a controlled khkuri test of your design.
 
First of all, welcome, though I think you've probalby at least been in contact with the group before if you've previously been banned from buying(just probalby before my time, I haven't been around long).

A little miffed though that you think use some of us put our Khuks too isn't "real" use. I take mine with me camping, and often keep one in truck. Split some firewood, help clear way through woods, and if need be, would help keep me alive while stranded in blizzard/aftereffects of torando/whatever. Been there before,a nd didn't have a Khuk, and could have used one. Not sure how that use, both comfort, work and possibly saving my life, doesn't count as real in your book. It's just as real as any other uses for a Khuk. Uncle Bill does his figures exactly as he should, by the results of the full spectrum of his users/customers, rather than any specific group/user.

Heck, if Jeep only rated their failures and quality of their vehicles by users who take them to Moab, or other places(one of the more extreme, or more popular of the eextreme, rock crawling courses in the states), they'd sure look bad. Jeeps go through all the time, but snap axles, pitman arms, etc on the way through.
 
I think the Jeep analogy is right on. I've a 86 Dodge Ramcharger, leaf springs, heavy frame, and guess what? EVen under my carefull husbandry, it occasionally breaks because I take it off road. ANd that's only occasional. I don't think I could break four of them in a row- unless Dodge paid me to, with Walker Evans.



munk
 
etp777 said:
A little miffed though that you think use some of us put our Khuks too isn't "real" use. I take mine with me camping, and often keep one in truck. Split some firewood, help clear way through woods,
Click to expand...
I never broke a khuk while camping or testing them in the back yard. Only while doing heavy work with them. Camping and splitting logs has worked fine for me too.

But for all I know, it could be that you put more stress on them when you do those things than when I do it, and so you test them well enough.

etp777 said:
Not sure how that use, both comfort, work and possibly saving my life, doesn't count as real in your book.
Click to expand...
Where do you get it from that it doesn´t count in my book?

etp777 said:
Uncle Bill does his figures exactly as he should, by the results of the full spectrum of his users/customers, rather than any specific group/user.
Click to expand...
He gave me a number one time that he had this rate of 1/5000 or 1/3000 or something, I don´t recall. So I got curious when I got 4/4. That´s all.
 
Munk, do you know what?

I broke a shuffel here the other day too. The wood started snapping slowly slowly, so I stopped. Now I have a half broken shuffel. I thought the shuffel was stronger.

I haven´t broken the 4WD yet, but my father suspects I will soon.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top