I've been playing around with this lil' khuk for a month or so now. It started it's life as an 8" lion head tourist piece and was relegated to sitting in my desk drawer being not so good for even letter opening until i decided to give it a sharpening one day.
Needing a project to keep idle hands busy i decided to dismantle the handle to remove the lion head,punched blade decorations and fugly handle and use some scrap antler and hardware that i have lying around. The only parts i've retained from the original khuk were it's blade and it's bolster. The buttplate is an old brass vietnam war era "US" collar pin and a cap nut i ground down and fit to the threads i put on the end of the tang. I reprofiled the spine a bit, added a choil so that i could get more than 3 fingers on the handle and remade a non traditional cho to keep it a khukuri. I have everything almost fit to the blade but have not epoxied anything Yet. I think this little khuk will make a neat Skinner/Caper when and if i can get it hard enough to hold a good edge.
And now i'm stumped.
I know almost nothing about the proper way to "set the pine" on this blade.
It is virtually un heat treated, as it was probably just meant to be a wall hanger or letter opener. I'm pretty sure it is spring steel and had been forged when originally made.
If any of you know of a good way to edge harden this blade and harden it where the tang meets the blade, some good tutorials or a knifemaker who could do just this one blade at a relatively inexpensive cost.....Please, let me know.
I suppose i could have one of my farmer friends use a O/A torch to do it, But at this point i really dont want to take chances and mess the blade up.
Needing a project to keep idle hands busy i decided to dismantle the handle to remove the lion head,punched blade decorations and fugly handle and use some scrap antler and hardware that i have lying around. The only parts i've retained from the original khuk were it's blade and it's bolster. The buttplate is an old brass vietnam war era "US" collar pin and a cap nut i ground down and fit to the threads i put on the end of the tang. I reprofiled the spine a bit, added a choil so that i could get more than 3 fingers on the handle and remade a non traditional cho to keep it a khukuri. I have everything almost fit to the blade but have not epoxied anything Yet. I think this little khuk will make a neat Skinner/Caper when and if i can get it hard enough to hold a good edge.
And now i'm stumped.
I know almost nothing about the proper way to "set the pine" on this blade.
It is virtually un heat treated, as it was probably just meant to be a wall hanger or letter opener. I'm pretty sure it is spring steel and had been forged when originally made.
If any of you know of a good way to edge harden this blade and harden it where the tang meets the blade, some good tutorials or a knifemaker who could do just this one blade at a relatively inexpensive cost.....Please, let me know.
I suppose i could have one of my farmer friends use a O/A torch to do it, But at this point i really dont want to take chances and mess the blade up.
lemons into lemonade. Very well done indeed