Khukuri blanks

I know it was on another forum (RIP). But I'm not sure how the story ends.
Is there any chance for such an offer in future? And full tang (or is it a dirty word), please. I had a terrible childhood building a hanle for a rat-tail tang khukuri.

ZoxX
 
I don't think this will ever fly. It's been attempted two or three times and never gets off the ground.

No full tangs. Kamis don't want to do it.

Bill
 

Rusty

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ZoxX, the HI discussion group on the K---forum had about 2400 posts when I started reading it. Way over that now, and I've read all of them on both forums. It's an education. The reason they use stick type tangs has to due with impact shock and absorption. A full tang would transmit the shock directly to your hand. The stick tang, set in the organic "epoxy" used can absorb some of that shock. And that's why they do it that way.

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Russ S
 
Kits? I can sell you a khukuri kit -- cheap!!! Your choice:

Narrow tang khukuri kit: 1 Mercedes spring, 1 buffalo horn

Full tang khukuri kit: 1 Mercedes spring, 1 buffalo horn

-Cougar Allen :{)

P.S. Instructions not included.
 
Cougar,

how about
1. Mercedes spring
2. buffalo horn
3. kami with tools

ZoxX
 
P.P.S. Kami not included.

I could include the tools without driving up the price much, though. Let's see ... 1 hammer (two hammers in the deluxe kit, large and small), forge (requires assembly), bellows (requires assembly), bicycle grinder (requires assembly) ... that'll do you. Whoops -- forgot the gluepot. I suppose they probably use a hot chisel, too. (I bet you don't know what a hot chisel is, or why the other one is called a cold chisel. Few people do, these days.)

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
OK, Cougar, what is a hot chisel, and why the other is cold? I know just a couple of English words, it's not my mother tongue. However, chisel is one of them (I used to build guitars).
Please, enlighten me.

And I was thinking of adding a Rotweiler for a full tang khukuri kit.

ZoxX
 
Hot chisels are (were) used on hot steel and had a more acute angle than a cold chisel -- you can use a more acute angle because red-hot steel is softer. Before power tools it was an easier way to do it than hacksawing by hand -- hacksaws were expensive then, too.

It wasn't easy, though. Steel isn't any softer until it gets to red heat. You pump the bellows until your Mercedes spring glows red, then take it out of the forge with tongs and quickly make a couple of cuts before it cools, then back into the forge and pump the bellows some more.... I've done enough old-time blacksmithing to appreciate what a wonderful thing a power hacksaw is.

I don't understand what Rotweilers have to do with full tangs ... maybe we're having language difficulties.

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Talking about forges and chisels, just to show you the state of the art in the shop I recently sent them a couple of brace and bits along with some high quality drills so they would not have to use the bow and string method of drilling handles.

These items were supplied, by the way, by very good friend of mine, a former LT Ranger who served in Nam and now is a college instructor with Phd.

Bill
 
Cougar, the Rotweilers are to keep you safe from all the angry kamis once they find out you have taken a perfectly good khukuri and mangled it by putting on a full tang.

-Cliff
 
I used to use the phrase "fair to middling" when someone asked me how I was doing today.
Then a farrier (?)- that is, someone who shoes horses, told me that was a blacksmithing term: fair being dull red and too cold to work, middling being yellowish and too soft, so that if something was between fair and midddling it was the right temperature to work. Since either way I usually wasn't quite that hot, I stopped using the phrase. Sounds plausible, though I have no way of knowing. Also a phrase I found interesting was "not worth a tinker's dam". The last word is properly spelled. A TIN-ker being a person who made his livelihood by re- tinning pots and pans the tin lining had worn off of. If a pan had a hole in it, he would take clay and mold the clay into a rope shaped piece, them press it around the hole in the pan to form a dam into which the tin could be poured and solidify, thus patching up the pan so it could be made to serve a while longer. Naturally afterwards the dam wasn't worth a ----! Now I'm wondering if the word itinerant came from the roving tinkers with their wagon/repair shop/homes. Wonder if they were Rom or Romany ( gypsies ) originally? There were suggestions that the gypsies of Europe were a people who came somehow from India way back when. And then Koestler thought that the my ancestors the Magyar (Hungarians)came from mid-russia, down to the area near where Armenia was, hooked up with the Kabar tribe ( khyber? ) and converted to Judaism about 500 AD, moved up away from the Turks to what's now Hungary, and were converted by Prince Stephen (whom the Pope gave crown jewels to for converting) about 1000 AD. Hmm, now will have to check out Magyar weaponry. Do know they had something called a Hungarian axe, about 4' long, shaped like a sparth axe.

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Russ S
 
Russ, you will not belive this but my grandfather, mother's side, Bill also and my namesake, was a tinker. Roamed around the country in a wagon, fixing things, shapening scissors and knives, selling needles and thread, snakeoil and the like. When he got married at about age 30 this put an end to his days of wandering and tinkering.

He made his home and headquarters in Cherokee, Kansas and worked the four state area of Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas.

Mother's mother's dad, Bill (again) Jones, ran the only blacksmith shop in Cherokee, Kansas and his claim to fame was he repaired wagon wheel and shod a team of horses for Frank and Jesse James when they passed through town.

Bill

 
Thanks for the etemology-semantics lesson Rusty.On a previous note;history is not dull but,hist.teachers can be.

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I think ZoxX and Cliff are trying to get me killed. Rotweilers wouldn't protect me from angry kamis with khukuris -- and neither would bears -- nor alligators. We've all seen the photographic evidence right here on these forums -- would a Rotweiler fare any better than a bear or an alligator???

My new catalog of khukuri kits, superceding the previous catalog and rendering it null and void:

Narrow tang khukuri kit: 1 Mercedes spring, 1 buffalo horn

Full tang khukuri kit: DISCONTINUED

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Cougar,
noone is trying to get you killed. Rotweiler is just an argument to help me explain that I want full tang khukuri.
A kami is not supposed to be armed with khukuri, at least airport control won't let him bring a one with him. He don't need a Mercedes leaf spring, Mercedes is a very common automobile here in Croatia. I want just a full tang khukuri blank. I'll privide the handle.
At the moment a kami finishes my khukuri he can't use it against the dog unless it is full tang. You can't use a rat-tail tang khukuri without a handle. So if he is really mad at my Rotweiler he must build a full-tang one to kill the poor beast. Then I'll say: "Thank you, that would be all, goodbye".
However, I hope he won't kill the dog.
Anyway, I'll send you back both a kami and the dog (in whatever state).

Please, note that due to NATO festival in near by Serbia, Zagreb airport is closed for now.

ZoxX
 
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