"In-The-Field" Khukuri Repair - Ideas Thread

Daniel Koster

Daniel Koster

www.kosterknives.com
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What ideas do you guys have for rehandling a khukuri with a broken handle "In-The-Field"...?


I was camping a couple of years ago and was using a bone-handled BGRS khukuri.

After a half-dozen or so hard chops, the bone handle shattered. Luckily, no-one was hurt. Also, lucky for me....I had brought a few other khukuris with me to "fall back on"....

But if I hadn't, what options would I have had to repair it?


If it happens to you, what would you do?


Let's see what ideas we can come up with.
 
In the field - A flexible wrap like string or cloth. Duct tape. (The universal solution.) If you still have parts of the handle the wrap can go over the top of these.
 
Well, this is assuming I'm somewhere on Earth where I can't get to any more of my khuks or even to a hardware store for glue?

If I had any kind of twine or rope or rags or leather I'd wrap enough around the tang and up to the cho to make a usuable grip.

If I had the right pocket knife or tool I could put a hole in a peice of wood. I'd put the tang through it and peen the end with a rock.

munk
 
Hmmm, bone handle just parted company with khukuri, what would the old sarge do? I'd cut an appropriate size piece of wood for the handle and split it in two halves. Using my karda, I'd carve channels on the insides of the two halves to accept the tang. The two handle slabs would be bound to the handle with a full length wrap of 550 cord (or even my boot laces if that's all I got) after first coating the tang with any glue, pine pitch, etc, that might be available. None available? No worries, just have to make sure the "handle slabs" wedge in nice and tight between the bolster and butt cap prior to cord wrapping.

Then, I'd take the dayumed thing home, wrap it up, and ship it to Dan Koster. :D

Sarge
 
Howard Wallace said:
Duct tape. (The universal solution.)
Click to expand...

I was bored and made a shiv at work a few weeks ago :) :rolleyes: . The handle was made of tape, but I figure it would be too soft for a chopping knife (it squishes in your hand). Makes a good handle for poking though. The tape handle might work for a chiruwa.

Dunno. Never really tried it though. :confused:
 
Someone already said duct tape and parachord huh

Well I'm an electrical engineer and a woodworker and I've found that one of the most useful things from my profession that crosses over is heat shrink tubing. It's available all over the web, and comes in many colors and sizes. I found it so useful in the woodshop making handles for jigs and such that I carry it in my survival kit for just such an ocasion. Once shrunk it is really pretty tough and thick enough to hold the shards of that handle together on the tang. Plus for extra strength you can double or tripple it up. Good stuff.

Andy
 
The 'shiv' reminds me of a knife I found on Baseline Ave in San Bernardino Ca, right across the street from Waterman Gardens, a notorious project development.

It was beaten to hell laying on the asphalt. A non descript 'bowie' style hunter knife without a handle wrapped loosely in electric tape. Always wondered who it killed.




munk
 
always carry a roll of duct tape on hikes. guess i'd grab whatever remained of the handle and just duct tape the thing together.

i guess if the handle completely shattered, hmm! i don't know. guess i'd take sarge up on his idea!
 
It's an interesting question. Necessity is the mother of intuition. An obvious question is do you try to take the keeper off the end of the tang? If you do, you could essentially take a full tang, and burn it into/ through a suitable piece of wood to create a temporary replacement. If you had a leatherman or another pocket knife, you might be able to bore most of the way through the new handle material. The whole heating the tang could result in multiple burns, and necessitates fire.

The duct tape and para cord handle might work, but that's a lot of tape. The heat shrink is pretty clever. I hadn't thought of that. Quite a good idea. But once again, you need an ample heat source. And how tight does it hold? I know it's great for connections, etc. It might be a great "top coat" if you will.

The carving of two handle slabs and lashing them together would be good, and possible easier than boring a hole through wood.

These are all great ideas, but what will "keep" the blade from flying off when swung? Should we all start carrying JB weld with us in the field?

mike
 
Wrapping the pieces back onto the tang with either tape or cord/twine/shoelaces would probably work, depending on how badly the handle shattered.

If it was a chiruwa, I'm betting that you could forget the scales and just wrap the tang itself. Maybe someone could cut two new undersized scales, bore holes in the appropriate places, and just pound them on over the pins? It would be neither pretty nor comfortable but it could probably work.

Sometimes the deadfall around here will be punked out in the middle but the exterior is good and hard. If you could find a piece that was just right, and you could get the butt cap off, you could probably just pound the tang right through the middle and call it good enough.
 
True Dave. But what's going to keep the handle on the kuk. The centrifugal force would want to just yank the kukri out of the hanlde. I don't know about you, but I don't want to find out how far a kukri blade flies like that. Maybe JB Weld should be a part of our survival kits. Like you said, it may be ugly, but it wouldn't come off.

mike
 
You could slide the keeper back over and peen it back on. In a pinch, you could probably just bend the end of the tang over the butt of the handle, assuming that you could find a hammer and an anvil. (i.e. two appropriately sized rocks.) It's soft enough that it shouldn't snap from this.

Edit: the more that I think about this, the more I wonder just what the circumstances are. If this is just a camping trip or such then I'd make a minimal effort to make the handle somewhat useable and I'd make sure that whatever I did was easily reversible, as I'm going to have to fix the thing properly afterwards. If I were in the middle of the woods with no food, snow's falling, and no one knows where I am, I'd be much more comfortable with the idea of making a "repair" that I couldn't fix once I got home; the khuk would probably be a goner but it would get me out of there, and I could buy another one later.
 
Okay. But I guess in a dire situation, the ugliest fix might be quite beautiful to see.

mike
 
Duct tape, 550 cord I think either would work in a survival situation,and you could always send it to Dan when you got home to fix if for good.


James
 
Superglue and 550 cord would work nicely on the chiruwa handle. You could add a nice grip on those 10-15 dollar tanto style blades from the PX with it.

If you've got some sort of wire, you could use the cho as an anchor point. :)
 
While ya chop a new chainpuri wood handle like Sarge said
save your empty beer cans, remove the top & bottom (dispose of em properly) & wrap the beer cans around your new custom chainpuri style wood handle, use a rock to help shape it, then stick it in your fire to forge (weld) the beer cans together, carving optional
When you get back, post a pic of it on the forum
tom
 
Restricting myself to what I always have when camping:

>If it were a chiruwa, I'd rough out slabs from a suitable branch, insert nails where rivets went (and bend over), and apply the Handyman's Friend - duct tape.

>If it was a narrow tang, I know the awl on my SAK, working from each end, could drill out a hole in a suitable length of suitable diameter of branch. Shim up tang with duct tape and pound in place. Then pound in wedges. Use carefully. Or maybe I could salvage the pieces of laha and remelt.

Sounds like a good reason to avoid bone handles. I've had wood fail, but always in a way that allowed duct-tape repairs to that handle.

Ed: Nylon paracord can be melted and dripped like candle wax. Maybe that could be dripped in from the bolster end to glue the blade somewhat.
 
kill something, dehair the hide, bind with wet rawhide, dry.

nothing to kill? a "real man" strips a piece of skin off his leg, binds handle with it, waits to dry.
 
:eek: :eek: :eek:
For those of us that ain't "real men", just wait until one of your buddies nods off. ;) :foot:

Sarge
 
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