Fox Folly "Rat Tail" tang pic

[Mark Nelson]

Thought you all might want to see this. Here are a couple of pics of the tang on my Fox Folly. Love the blade. Could not stand the handle. It was strange in a way, the handle on it was the only handle of all the Khurks that I have that caused my hand to hurt. It did not feel secure. So I took the plunge and decided to put a new handle on it. I was suprised at the length of the tang given the small handle size. The (go get them Yvsa) habaki bolster took up a great deal of the length. I will be able to have a much bigger handle (which I prefer) now that it is gone. 5/16 at the top and tapers down to just under 1/4 of a inch.

Edited to add, that I do not think that it would break under "normal" use. By "normal" I mean use that would be considered abuse my most.

 

[Yvsa]

Mark it looks like the intersection of blade and tang are remarkedly close to the cho on your FF or is that the cho I'm seeing in the flat side pic?
You can gain a little more length by taking off steel on both sides of the blade down to the tang to move the tang/blade intersection closer to the cho and also eliminate the cho creep, although it wasn't as bad on the FFs as it is on the other khuks.
Since I didn't take my one FF apart I reworked the little dinky cho so as to make it bigger and move it closer to the edge of the bolster. The flat area on mine is about 3/16" instead of the 1/4" and longer flat area found on most of these damned ugly bolsters.

 

[Mark Nelson]

That is the cho that you are seeing. I had given a bit of thought on moving the tang/blade intersection closer to the cho and increasing the size of the cho, but if I did so I would remove part of Kumar's star. It may seem silly but I just don't feel right about doing that. I will see about a better pic tonight. I will put the boster next to the blade so that everyone can see where it was in relation to tang/blade intersection and where the handle really started.