how not to chop with a khukuri

C

Cliff Stamp

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I have been doing some chopping recently with a handful of blades including an 18" Ang Khola. I started off on some clapboard and the khukuri was simply too powerful. If I chopped heavy the board shattered and a much smaller and lighter knife like the Battle Mistress was more effective. It is kind of amusing to look at the Battle Mistress from that perspective, but it is very light in hand compared to the khukuri, in comparison it is pretty much weightless. Anyway I then upgraded to 8" board which was stiff enough to take the full impact of the khukuri. However the Ang Khola was actually problematic, it was slow, heavy, the penetration wasn't inline with the effot and the blade tended to turn in the cuts, a lot of this was due to fatigue.

I had read a lot of reviews/reports on khukuris over the years and a lot of the commentary runs that way so it was kind of amusing. The problem was that I was trying to use it the same way I was chopping with the Battle Mistress and this is simply wrong. I was doing this mainly as I had been using bowie style knives for so long I just used the khukuri in the same manner without thinking. The problem is that you can't (or I can't anyway) swing the larger and heavier khukuri driving from the wrist and elbow like you can with a lighter and much more neutral knife like the Battle Mistress. Once I switched to driving from the shoulder and drawing from the back and hips the khukuri's performance drove ahead significantly, the fatigue rate fell off dramatically and it became a pleasure to use.

Of course it still isn't the ideal geometry for such hard wood, it works much better on living woods, but still the performance was night and day. Now I just have to develop the strength to swing the 22" Ang Khola at about two hits per second.


-Cliff
 
Habits are very useful, but sometimes they become unconscious and then can be a liability.

I think when you were doing more work and testing with the khukuris this was not a problem. You just had to remember how to use it, but it took a while.

This is one reason a person who uses one tool a lot may be effective with it. He knows how to optimize its performance. The tool may not be ideal, but the user knows how to use it to the best of its potential for that application. He might even beat out someone with a better tool for the job, if the user of that tool doesn't know how to get the most out of it.

It's one of the advantages of a multipurpose tool like the khukuri. If you use one consistantly then you get to know it and its abilities.
 
AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! Khuk's do that!!!! :D they're like M1 tanks!! you don't just think "gee I wonder if this'll cut this little board"!!!

Cut it? friend that monster'll destroy it!! :D

Try fooling about with a 25in Chit sometimes.;)
 
Howard Wallace said:
If you use one consistantly then you get to know it and its abilities.
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Yeah, I am going to switch back to the 18" Ang Khola for my primary work knife for awhile. I also picked up a bit of skin sensitivity on the index finger as I wasn't used to the grip. That goes away with use as well.

-Cliff
 
Cliff, I've found it works the other way too. I have been using the 16.5" WWII and 20" Sirupati models so long that I'm really bad with Bowies and machetes.:o

Once in a while I'll loan a Khukuri to someone when I can supervize them. If they are not used to it, they can't chop very well. Once they get the hang of it, they don't want to hand the blade back. :)

Guess I'm saying that I agree, but in a lot more words. :) Thanks for posting your insites. It's nice to have discutions on blade usage. :D

Heber
 
One more thing: "This Thread is useless with out Pics!!"

:D :D

Heber
 
I do pretty good with just a ball peen hammer...
 
wildmanh said:
I have been using the 16.5" WWII and 20" Sirupati models so long that I'm really bad with Bowies and machetes.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you have to rely on more speed to get them to be really effective, A lot of the time people judge the blade by how they work for them without taking the time to figure out how to work with the blades.

clapboard_knives.jpg


That is the first bunch of blades used on this :

clapboard_chopped.jpg


and :

board_knives.jpg


were used on this :

board.jpg


As I relaxed into the correct technique I found I was approaching the same speed with the Ang Khola as with the Ratweiler. You just have to use different muscles. The khukuri was also taking about half as many hits. There is a bunch of heavier wood in the background, I'll cut that up tomorrow. I should be back into sensible technique by then.

-Cliff
 
Good thread and info, thanks. I would just say that anyone who could even approach 2 hits / sec with a 22" AK is light years ahead of anything I've ever seen! That would be in the neighborhood of 2.5 lbs. I might be able to handle 10 or 15 seconds of that. You must have forearms like popeye to even consider getting to that goal! ;)

Seriously, any AK style blade bigger than 18" is just hard work for me. You have obviously done a lot of chopping with different style knives, while the only thing I have ever chopped with other than a khukuri is a machete or hatchet. Interesting observation on the differences between a large knife and heavier khuk.

I have personally found that for the larger knives, the AK is about the worst balanced for me, with the larger sirupates equally poor. I seem to have more control with Baby ganga rams, samshers, junges, WWII's, etc., basically any large knife other than an AK. The ones I have anyway are not particularly well balanced compared to these other models. YMMV. The new attitudes and large BDC's are far better balanced. But I'm sure if use it enough and you get very good with the one you practice with.


Thanks again for the thoughtful post. :thumbup:

Regards,

Norm
 
I like the balance and general heft of the 18" Ang Khola for wood work, for lighter stuff like cutting grasses :

18_ak_grasses.jpg


It does ok in terms of cutting ability. The edge hooks well, nice length, but all that power is wasted and it is the kind of thing you do more for a wrist workout than efficient cutting.

As the vegetation gets heavier then the knife gets more effective as a cutting tool, but even on some thick weeds which are a fraction of an inch wide the khukuri is still way too much power :

18_ak_weeds.jpg


You have to hold back on the swing because it ignores the weeds and isn't slowed down at all. The khukuri excells on thicker wood work, it easily takes apart a small round :

18_ak_round_split.jpg


and has no trouble popping the splits into very fine sections :

18_ak_fine_splits.jpg


For the small splits it is again overkill in terms of power but the actual amount of physical effort it takes is only a small fraction of the limbing and bucking so I don't view it as much of a functional negative.

I generally would not go any lighter than this blade for a general out door knife, I just had not used it seriously in awhile so I had "forgot" how to use it. I pretty much ignore it in hand now though and it is back to feeling weightless again.

-Cliff
 
Cliff,
Do you own a 20" AK?? I was wondering about the performance between the 18" and the 20"

I have a 15" AK that I use for social work at the house, and I am thinking of getting a 20" for my truck (social work, woods stuff)

What edge do you have on it btw??


Nice information btw...Thanks
 
Cliff, thanks for posting the pictures. They help add to the topic. :)

My 15" AK with the 1/2" thick spine doesn't do really well on light vegitation. But it does great on limbing trees and splitting logs. Come to think of it, I have not used that knife for anything but splitting in the last few years. And last year I put a nice sharp convex edge on it, the sharpest isn't been since I got it. Guess I should try it out again. :D

Thanks again!

Heber
 
Leatherface said:
Cliff,
Do you own a 20" AK?? I was wondering about the performance between the 18" and the 20"
Click to expand...

He has one of the older shop 1 22" AKs. Reading his old review on it recently gave me the itch to special order one of my own. ;) IIRC he updated his review to say that he restored the original convex edge the 22" AK came with.

Bob
 
Leatherface said:
I have a 15" AK that I use for social work at the house, and I am thinking of getting a 20" for my truck (social work, woods stuff)
Click to expand...

One thing which may surprise most when handling them is the massive difference because for most knives they would be similar. For example my Ratweiler and Battle Mistress are 7" and 10" bowie patterns, in terms of khukuri length convention they are about 13 and 15.5". Since they are similar in the other respects, stock thickness and blade width, they are thus only slightly different in feel in hand. However my 22" Ang Khola is both massively thicker and much wider than the 18" Ang Khola. Even though I find the 18" version very light in hand my 22" one is still *really* heavy. There is of course lots of variation from one to the next as they are hand forged so check the weights.

What edge do you have on it btw??
Click to expand...

The edge has a convex bevel which starts off from a ten degree sweep which thickens to 12 degrees at about 3/16" back from the edge and at about 1/32" back from the edge it sweeps to the apex angle of 16 degrees per side. I plan on dropping this back 1-2 degrees gradually as I rehone it.

wildmanh said:
Guess I should try it out again.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is good to go back to working with real knives on occasion.

-Cliff
 
Cliff, did you have access to a Sirupate, Chitlangi, or the Attitude model?


Glad to see you here and chopping.


munk
 
you need to relearn when you use a khukuri. They do a lot of the work for you. Getting them in your hand so the horn of the pommel digs a bit into your palm helps you snap it back out when it sticks.
 
Leatherface said:
I have a 15" AK that I use for social work at the house, and I am thinking of getting a 20" for my truck (social work, ...
Click to expand...
Tough caseload? Back in the day, I never needed more than a pukko when I worked Child Welfare ... :D

t.
 
I have a 20" Sirupati, it make for a much nicer light brush cutter than the Ang Khola, but it is still a very heavy duty pattern. After a few days of chopping, I am back to two hits per seconds with the 18" Ang Khola now. I can push faster, but it just seems really unnatural and unless I really think about it during the work I relax back into a one hit per second pace which is about where I would work actually just cutting work. My precision is really low at that speed though, I would estimate maybe 50% of optimal, lots of stagger.

One thing which may surprise many people about the khukuris is that even the large ones have very acute edges, far more so than typical tactical knives and thus work very wel in general for shallow cutting. Mainly for amusement I prepared a meal with my 18" Ang Khola recently, carrots, onions, celery, blood pudding, banada bread, etc. . It actually works much better than you might expect, plus it is kind of fun to make mashed potatos.

-Cliff
 
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