Khuk damage and restoration

eraaij

eraaij

Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
191
Yesterday I damaged my 15' AK Kesar user khuk. Since last may, I used this one almost on a daily basis for firewood chopping, camping and making coffee :). I like to think I got pretty experienced with it. For some reason one hit went wrong, the khuk did not hit the firelog in the center resulting in the blade delving full speed in the ground. It hit a stone.

I examined the edge and saw that it was damaged near the tip: a chip of about 4 mm long and 2 mm deep was missing. At first I was ready to hang this one on the wall and wanted order a new user. But then I remembered that I had a coarse Scandia stone somewhere and decided to try to restore the edge.

After a couple of strokes from the belly to the tip I saw that I could easily restore the blade line. The coarse grind takes metal away in a very controlled matter. Since you use no power tools, heating should not be a problem. The resulting blade was of course very blunt, so after restoring the curve, I had to sharpen it again.

After the restoration I went out again and tested the blade on a few logs, hitting them at full speed. No problems at all. Hard as a nail. I was not ready to 'depart' from this blade and am very happy to be able to keep using it.

Just something I wanted to share,
-Emile
 
Glad to hear the repair was a simple one, good for you. I think with a "chopping" tool, damage is normal. What amazes me is how the khukuri holds up to constant abuse. ie, hammering, beating, digging/prying, chopping wood etc, this kind of work is considered abnormal use by most knife makers. Hope you continue to enjoy your khukuri for many more years.:)
 
I confess to being one of those dinosaurs unable to visualize just what 2mm deep is.

I'll check my ruler with the metric side.

When I damage the tip area, I'm torn between doing nothing about it and at least smoothing it back. It doesn't have to be an super even edge shaving sharp, because it will just get hit again some day. Leaving it too uneven will put more strain on exposed edges and possibly damage the blade more than a uniform edge when it does strike the wrong thing again.

But I try and resist restoring to complete. It's an tip. It's made to bend and little chips are normal. Most of mine have slight chips off the end.

I don't have any non-user khuks. I know, so much for my profit in the 'collector market'

munk
 
Good stuff and thanks. Almost anything you use will suffer some over time. The trick is to keep it up and running and you did that this time.
 
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