Kailash Giveaway Progress Thread

Kailash Blades

Kailash Blades

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
Messages
783
Spark will be giving away one of our khukuris as part of the 20th Anniversary Year of Giveaways, and to build a bit of anticipation for it, we're going to upload some of the production pics of the knife getting made etc. The particular blade we're making is a 13" pensioner khukuri. This blade originated as a Custom Order for Shawn Hatcher from Hatcher Knives. During his travels through the internet, he came upon some pictures of this khukuri and was captivated by it’s bold profile and distinctive fuller. This knife embedded in his brain and went on to influence his own work with khukuris, and his adaption of this blade was the first knife to feature his expertly ground spinal fullers which have since become a trademark of his work. However, despite an extensive search he was never able to find an original to buy and came to us to resurrect this historical blade from the past in the form of a replica.

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Information is quite scarce on this blade. Most likely produced in between the world wars in Kotli Loharan, located in modern day Pakistan by a manufacturer known as either “JD Pensioner & Sons” or “UD Pensioner & Sons”, the difficulty coming as a result of the stamping having been worn away on almost every knife of theirs. Most likely this blade was originally intended for military use, privately commissioned for a gurkha’s specific needs, but we can only speculate. The knife is relatively lightweight and lively in hand, but retains a decisive forward balance and a decent length which makes it a really fantastic all rounder, well suited to martial arts as well as food prep, brushwork and light and medium chopping.
 
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Like all of our blades this guy is forged out over hot coals with the help of another blacksmith with a sledgehammer. Initially the stock is hot cut to size from 5160 leaf springs.

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From here the blade is beaten roughly to shape. Care is taken not to work the blade while it's cold to avoid internal stresses or overheat it which could cause large grain growth.

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In the process of stretching out the belly and the point, the blade has its bevels established as well as distal taper. From here the profile is checked against a sheet pattern and refined further. The last thing to be forged out is the tang, which is kept short and thick for ease of handling beforehand. Before it even hits a grinder you can see that the form is almost entirely there. Plenty of material to take off the edge later as well as the fuller needing to be ground in but we're well on the way.

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We'll be updating this thread with progress as we go. Once spark puts up the actual giveaway thread we'll post it here so you don't miss your chance to win it.
Take care,
Andrew and the team at kailash blades.
 
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Laurel11 said:
Looking forward to this one
Click to expand...
Nice!

We've started up on grinding this blade, and as you can see the bevel has been cleaned up, the profile refined and the tang brought to it's final shape. The tiny handle here is to give amore comfortable grip while grinding. The kind of grinding wheels we use require a fair bit of force at times, so something like this helps a lot. Once the fullers have been ground then this will be headed to quench and heat treat. By this point it's been normalised three times to reduce grain size and destress the blade form forging and it's previous life under a truck so we should be good to go.

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Post quench and this thing is looking seriously crisp. Great looking fullers, sharp grind lines and a great profile Still a lot of meat to take off the edge but otherwise from here on in it's just fitting and finishing really.

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For this particular blade we're doing something quite new for Nepal, a stacked leather handle. These are made out of leftover scraps of buffalo leather that are stacked up, epoxied and carved to shape. These handles are comfortable, shock absorbing, grippy, light and more stable in different climates than the standard wood and horn of traditional khukuris. They also look excellent.

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We're using copper hardware on this blade because it's classy and matches well witht the look of a stacked leather handle. Every buttcap and front bolster gets made from sheet by hand to match the handle shape needed for each blade.

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Once that's all cured, we begin grinding off the excess and peen the tang for a final secure fit.

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As you can see the blade is still yet to be given the final grind and get finished, this is the traditional way of doing blades in Nepal. All fitting and then all finishing. We're experimenting with finishing our full tang blades first before the handles go on as it'll allow for a nicer transition between handle and blade as well as raise the overall finish but tradition is very hard to budge in Nepal regardless of benefits.

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