Photos Forged Khukuri WIP

[Joshua Fisher]

Decided to finally forge a khukuri today and thought why not make a work in progress thread, started off with a rough bar of 1080 .25” thick by 2” wide. rough forging done, the handle section is about 6” long with about an 11” blade. Decided to make this a full tang khukuri versus the traditional hidden tang. Definitely one of the bigger blades I’ve forged, all done by hand with a 3lb rounding hammer and my arm is definitely telling me to invest in a power hammer.

Here’s a bunch of photos after profiling the blade, I do my best to flatten the handle by hand on the anvil then I go to the grinder and use a welding magnet to flatten the tang. I like to leave a forged finish on my blades usually so I like to flatten the tang before I do any thermal cycling or before putting my makers mark that way I get a flat surface for my handle material but still maintain that forged texture and look. I’ll post some more photos as I start grinding bevels and finishing this up. Thank you for reading through and feel free to ask any questions or post advice.

 

[Bigfattyt]

Looking great so far. Keep us updated. My "love" of Khukries is growing.

 

[Joshua Fisher]

So here’s a quick update this morning, I normally grind all my bevels post heat treating since I’m normally working with thinner stock and it helps mitigate warps but I figured with how thick the khukuri is at the moment it would be good to do a little bit of beveling so I don’t run into issues hardening. So I started roughing in the hollow grind with a 36 grit belt on a 10” wheel.

at this point I’ve done one thermal cycle and I’ll do two more before heat treating. I’m trying to decide what handle material to use later one, currently thinking green canvas micarta would look really good but I haven’t made up my mind.

 

[Joshua Fisher]

here the blade is after heat treating and finish grinding. I did an interrupted quench using brine and oil, brought up to temp in the forge just slightly above non magnetic then straight into brine for 2 seconds then into oil to finish cooling. If done right this is a pretty safe quenching method and this blade came out very straight probably due to the thick spine and very hard. Tempered it back at 400 for two cycles then finished grinding the hollows in on the 10” wheel and wire brushed the forged flats. I sharpened up the blade and tested it chopping through multiple 2x4s and splitting some pieces. The weight feels good and after all the chopping it is still razor sharp. Next step is to get the handle on it.

 

[TroyN]

I'm really digging it, great pics! Green canvas would look and work well (my first blade with green micarta, made it out of my wife's wedding table-runners):

But I'm partial to black walnut on just about anything!

 

[Joshua Fisher]

Very nice, both materials look very nice. I’m really leaning to green canvas micarta for the durability since this knife is intended for some heavy chopping.

 

[Joshua Fisher]

Alright here is the final post with finished pictures of this work in progress thread, this was a fun knife to make and had been a long term goal since I started bladesmithing to make a khukuri, I waited to start this project until I felt I could complete it and do this style of knife justice. I feel like I accomplished that goal and now I will move on to the next goal, maybe it’s time to start my abs journey. Anyway here are the pictures and thank you for taking the time to follow this post.

 

[TroyN]

I love it!