First Kukri!!!

Y

yavol

Joined
Apr 11, 2007
Messages
35
Hi all!

3 good friends of mine bought for me the British Army Service Model Kukri for my birthday (30). I never thought I would get one because I can't afford it yet (still paying off student loans). The kukri is simply amazing. Sorry no pics yet (no digital camera).

I just wanted to personally thank Yangdu and all the hardworking people at HI who put together a quality knife that is made for some real work. Thank you guys for not skimping on the details and features just to push out more products per month. I look forward to writing about many upcoming adventures in the mountains using this knife.

Now on w/ my impressions: :D
- I love the spring steel. Hard and tough. It definately has a different feel than my 1095 kabar.
- It came sharp enough to do basic chopping but not much for slicing yet. I gotta figure out a good way to keep a fine edge on it.
- The Karda and Chakma (sp?) are great. All it needs now is a small loophole for a flint and BAM! instant camp-kife application. ;D
- The knife came with tons of thick, gunky oil or grease of some sort embedded in all the niche work on the blade (brown and reddish colored). So, my friend cleaned it up and used baby oil on it before he gave it too me! :/ ewww. Now this mean looking knife smells like clean baby butt! How awkward... :P
- After some chopping, I've concluded it's roughtly equivalent to a hatchet of the same handle length if it's used properly. This is cool since now i won't need to carry a hatchet in the woods anymore! (axes are always welcome for bigger stuff).
- The weight-forward design is tons of fun to play with. It's gonna take a while to master this blade shape.

Thanks again Yangdu and HI people! It will be well used.

-- yavol
 
The BAS was my first khuk.

I'm glad you're finding out how wonderful these blades are. It's a great package, isn't it? When you buy an HI khuk you get the woods; chopping, camping, carrying, and just being there. An experience. A gun writer once said he preferred to think of his testing loads with a rifle as, "An afternoon spent with ________" That's how I feel about HI khuks.

Serious chopping will mean a larger blade for you.


munk
 
Congrats, yavol!

The BAS is a fine starter khuk. It really fills the "every-man" niche. You're lucky to have such great friends. Have fun with your new khuk...also, check out the safety thread. These blades tend to get away from you if you aren't careful. Some time when Heber stops by he can tell you about his run in with a 15" Ang Khola. AK 1, Several tendons 0:eek:
 
Yikes! Duely noted.

Is it ok to ask another question in the same thread?
...

After some chopping yesterday, I noticed that my kukri had some rather serious bends and dents of the edge. These dents pushed the metal up to 1/4 an inch into the bevel / grind! (location is just up the blade from the sweet spot by 2 inches) I was only trimming dead branches of 2.5 inch thick off some lemon trees (medium to hard wood).

Is this normal? Have you guys seen your kukris bend so much? If it's normal then I'll just learn to deal w/ it.
 
Hmm, I don't know about lemon trees, but I know some trees can collect silicates in the joints where branches meet the trunk or limb. I've had a balsam fir wreck one non-HI khuk and badly dent another.
 
That makes sense. Still i'm kinda surprised at the denting but it's fixable I think.

I couldn't find the crafter's initials on the HI website so it might be from a new guy (U.B. symbol: flower).

I'm still really stoked w/ the knife. but maybe this post could be helpful feedback for the crafter.
 
Thanks all for the encouraging feedback!


C.S. Graves said:
Hmm, I don't know about lemon trees, but I know some trees can collect silicates in the joints where branches meet the trunk or limb. I've had a balsam fir wreck one non-HI khuk and badly dent another.
Click to expand...

That's a great point about the silicates. Just the other day I read how well-profiled felling axes (thin) would suffer chipping or denting under the same conditions.

Update: I managed to gently hammer back the denting. It's mostly straight now; not quite sure how to make it "perfect" yet.
 
I wonder if a few passes with the chakma would help a little with re-aligning what remains of these dents... anyway, when you get the dents repaired as best you can, a bit of rough sharpening can take away some of the misaligned metal.

In a simlar but less extreme note, my Khadka Samsher accidentally hit a rock two weeks ago, but the damage to the edge was fortunately quite minor. Just a bit of flattening on about 1cm of the blade. I'm sure enough sharpening will eventually get that little spot back to shape.
 
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