Khukuri Maintainence...The questions no one else...

Razorzedge000

Razorzedge000

Joined
Jan 10, 2002
Messages
121
is stupid enough to ask but i need experience here..When my 18 in AK arrived from Reno; there were small cracks in the horn handle; the belt loop was really stiff; leather was sorta dry and "micro-tools didnt" fit sheath well; there were unfinished buff marks on the knife.

To soften the solid leather parts of the sheath to prevent cracking; I use lexol and duckback proofing cream. should I apply the lexol to the rest of the sheath since its wood underneath too?

today i bought a tub of hooflex maint stuff at about $9;seems to work really well on handles;when should I be worried about cracking...now or when it goes "POW"?? There are white marx on the horn handles of all three blades. I assume these are natural coloring; although the ones on the bak of the khuk are slowly dissappearing..weird..

polishing is where i need help. Simi-chrome works well but is slow and I dont have access to a buffer yet here at home to use jewelers rouge.

This is a user tool most without a doubt...BUT I take care of my CRAFTSMAN stuff too... Thank you all so much.. U can use me for the guina-pig here..its OK..My pride can suffer..YES I can read what is posted on the HI website.. I have..Just need to know what youve all done.:rolleyes: :D :confused:
 
Ive just never had to feed a monster like this before...more orders comin' People are gonna love us both around Christmas time...
 
Raz - I use Lexol, on the entire scabbard. I just soak a corner of a T-shirt, and do a one-layer application, let it dry, and then one more. The leather is almost rawhide when it is stretched over the wood, so I don't use enough to soften it, especially around the seams. If the dye is OK after the Lexol, I leave it alone. If I've rubbed any thin spots, I re-dye with a good shoemaker's dye (Fiebing's or Murphy's) and when that is set, I use Neutral Kiwi - not Black. I load up about four heavy coats, letting each one dry for an hour or so, and buff with a soft shoe brush. If you're out and about, the Neutral will rub off, but won't blacken your leg. I do the same with my black leather rigs, and have never had it come off on slacks, khakis or jeans.
Your can polish your blade with a T-shirt and jeweler's rouge, after you've gotten off the rougher stuff with SimiChrome or Flitz, and fine steel wool. It's tedious,and a buffer is better, but it can be done.
Hooflex, Corona Ointment, an Fiebing's Hoof dressing are all great for horn. If the cracks are bothersome, or appear to be prone to growing, fill them with super glue. Some of the smaller cracks in mine actually appear to have gotten narrower after they were treated. The rouge and rag buff works well on horn, too, after you've sanded down the glue seams.
 
Lexol is the shiznit for leather..I just didnt want to overdo it. I looked for the shoemakers dye u were talkin about today. Didnt think of kiwi neutral or steel wool..damn good idea. Ive got a horsehide jacket made in 66 (so was I)and it was in a car fire...

I LOVE LEXOL.

Waiting to go bak to the shop for touch up is impossible when youre an old gunsmiths apprentice...tried clover fine and a thirt while waiting on replies..not bad..not that good..ennhhh
 
Originally posted by razorblade00




when should I be worried about cracking...now or when it goes "POW"?? There are white marx on the horn handles of all three blades. I assume these are natural coloring; although the ones on the bak of the khuk are slowly dissappearing..weird..
Click to expand...

I'd do the hooflex thing now before the handle cracks. My theory being that if the horn is drying out it could crack. That wonderful hooflex stuff should remoisturize the horn. (works well on fingernails too :)) I find that treating the horn brings out some of the white grainlines. Kinda neat but I've never had any disapear.
 
Ive got hooflex on the handles now... just wandered "how to watch the warning signs" the reason I asked was when it comes right down to it; I dont wanna send my any khukuri i buy fron HI back..for any reason I would feel lost now..
Id almost rather rehandle the bad boyz myself if I can figure out how.

When i say this i mean no bad reflection on hi at all..but i bet alotta guyz would return the heavy choppers they own for handle replacement if they could stand to be without the knife itself that long.
:D

It just seems that horn or wood handles are "weak" sounding in my head. MY HEAD..thats all. I mean if u got some cocobolo or black ironwood and then conditioned it w/ wood hardner; hell; id like to see you break it!!

Ive never had experience w/HI khuks; but so far BLADES kik ass..nothing wrong with the actual knife itself. Im really spastic about knife care. I even treat my old spyderco endura w/respect; wipe down my stainless blades; use as little rough work sharpening as possible. I finally got tired of petting my COLTS and sold them...

bought Glock...still pet them..not as much :eek:
 
Dont worry too much about cracks. I have a few old horn items with cracks, and theyre all still readily usable (they came cracked and I havent had the time to fixem). Anyways the cracks are cosmetic, and somewhat inevitable (Ive seen horn that was 100 years old with few small cracks but cracks there were). You can always fix the crack with super-glue, and the thing will last another 100 years. The thing that would really be the killer on the handle would be insects or mold (I have nightmares about mold somedays, especially on wood).
 
Listen to Fed, he collects old stuff :D

The only handle cracks I've heard of were from people leaving their knives in their cars overnight where the temperature drop was signifigant or in the hold of an airplane which is not pressurized or heated.

Will Kwan had a rather long sirupati which had some nasty cracks that he glued back. I'm wondering how that turned out.

I think Yvsa posted once on how to make a new handle some time ago. Maybe a search will help you find what you need. I'm too lazy to look now.
 
Don't have a lot of experience here, had khuks for just a couple of months. I think the main thing is to treat them as you would if they were always important to you (like a Nepali would if it was a very important tool to his survival). Do you leave important stuff outside in the car during a cold-snap or heat-wave of the century? From what I've seen, the hoof stuff is the best you can do for horn handles. I've not acquired any since I'm not near any tack stores. I'm using Ablerto VO5 until I can get some,and it clearly is appreciated by the horn handles I have.

Don't know what degree of polish you're after on the blade, but I've found that the green crayon-like honing compound (Yellow Box, "Product No 12668 micro fine honing compound"--try wood working stores) applied to 1500 grit carborundum paper works pretty good. Seems like the carborundum quickly cuts but the honing compound gives a good polish at the same time. Rubbing it on 2000 or 3000 grit paper or trying Simichrome with 0000 steel wool would probably get you even further....haven't tried that yet. I'm sure that soon I'll pursuing a higher polish...

Got a "rawhide" old-style scabbard in last week. This is a different thing than the "new village sarki" product that came with my other blades--it's like wood!! I gave it a couple of coats of Kiwi polish and then a coat of Brook's "Proofide". I don't know what "Lexol" is. Proofide is a product made by people that have hand-produced old-fashioned leather bicycle saddles for many, many years. It is used to very gently soften the leather without sagging and to allow a break-in to fit the saddle to the rider. (Like any thing else, it can be overdone.) It is often available in better bicycle stores. To me, it seemed the right thing to help keep the leather from getting more brittle. As you might imagine, a leather bicycle saddle is ruined if it gets too soft and stretches as would happen with neat's foot oil or the like.
 
Originally posted by BruiseLeee
Listen to Fed, he collects old stuff :D

The only handle cracks I've heard of were from people leaving their knives in their cars overnight where the temperature drop was signifigant or in the hold of an airplane which is not pressurized or heated.

Will Kwan had a rather long sirupati which had some nasty cracks that he glued back. I'm wondering how that turned out.

I think Yvsa posted once on how to make a new handle some time ago. Maybe a search will help you find what you need. I'm too lazy to look now.
Click to expand...
Razor,
I know what Bruise is talking about w/ cracks. I left my khuks in my car overnight here in Colorado. The cracks were up to 1cm wide and a couple were down to the tang:mad: Maybe it was just bad luck or maybe because I hadn't used hooflex. I also applied pure lanolin later to be sure. Before the cracks were hairline and figured it was natural. I tried superglue. A lot of SG in fact. I'm ashamed to admit I was stubborn enough to put a few bottles in one handle alone before I was "convinced to use epoxy. Looks like a zombie hehe. My poor 18" Bura AK looks like it has been through an avalanche, but it is the best tool I've ever found, since I've gotten past whining over cosmetics.
The other horn handles have been treated out of the long brown box. Heck, I soak them in pure lanolin as a precaution and haven't used hooflex for a while. None have even cracked past what they came with. A line of SG on the smallest crack does wonders.
A while back Bruise said he'd leave his khuks overnight for a month ( or something like that right Bruise?). I'm not that brave yet, but I have left my zombie in a dark company vehicle for a week when it was -15 in the evenings here on Glade Park and up to 40 at noon in the same day recently. No cracks.
I'm working on the polishing too. I always love these threads because the war horses around here give additional advice and tips everytime. I read and reread to learn as much as possible. It's always best to learn from someone else's burned fingers.

That's how I know about Tsimi's Dog/Cat Tacos.
:p
 
Like the old saying goes there's a million ways to skin a cat, and like everything there's a million ways to take care of something. First I must stress dont worry too much about it. One cant fight the sands of time forever, though you can do your best to try and slow it. Real old horn takes an unique enough olive grey look, and well its almost an impossibility to try and prevent the color change. I wouldnt worry too much about rusting either. Its not gonna rust through in your life time. Id just try and make sure it doesnt develop active rust, and keep it well oiled or waxed (whatever floats your boat). Realistically I ended up etching my work khuk, and well I think Im gonna go around and etchem all when I get a chance (just after I re-polish 7 other swords, make a few fittings, and then make about 3 scabbards). After a few decades anyways they wouldnt have a bright shiny polish (no matter how you cared for em), and especially with a work tool the finish is gonna get scratched. The only way around the scratching is not to use it. You can constantly re-polish it (eg. going through the grits of paper, and then the polishing compounds), but then if youre lazy like me youll say F#@k it and just etch the thing, and be satisfied with a dark grey blade. Anyways Ive never been fond of a shiny blade. While the etched blade is still susceptable to rust, staining isnt particularly that big a problem since the darn thing is darkened anyways. If you want you can even polish after etching, and get a dark mirror effect...but then theres the whole lazy route....
 
...and see what you started :D I've got to get some Proofide. Lexol is the new "Wunderkind" on the block, and a good product, but something old and tried floats my boat. Fed has tons of experience and talent, but this is the most I've seen him post in a while. Did you ever finish the Dremel carvings, Fed? This is the sort of post that draws everybody out of the woodwork, and turns over new/old turf. New for you, but swapping "old" stuff finds new for all of us. Then, JVZ comes up with "what does Khukuri mean"....now I gotta go watch that thread....What DOES Khukruri mean, anyhoo? :confused:
 
Ok, handle cracking.

ALL my horn handles cracked when I moved from a tropical climate to a temperate one (actually when the seasons changed to Fall). I did NOT have them protected with hooflex:eek: But the "car trunk" senario is not the only way they will crack.

I have epoxy-fixed them and they look great.

HOWEVER, I did have an interesting thing happen yesterday. I took my 20" Sirupati (horn)out to do some heavy chopping on some dried/rotting poplar logs. I had repaired the handle with epoxy (1/16" crack about 1 1/2 long). After the first few good solid whacks I noticed 2 new hairline cracks about 2" long running from bolster (just to the left of lining up with blade spine). I continued chopping for 40 min or so and no new cracks developed, nor did the new ones get any worse.

I'm hoping that that was the last of my handles "growing pains" and after I epoxy those it will be stabilized.

On another note, I followed Walosi's woodchuck advice and used some tung oil on a villager handle. I put on 3 coats (after sanding and steel wooling in between coats drying) and it looks really good. This handle was BUTT UGLY to start with. Dark with no visible grain at all. Now it is still kinda dark but you can see beautiful grain running through the handle. Made a helllava difference!

Thanks Wal:D (I'll keep you posted on the results when I work on the other khuks I wanted to work on).
 
Originally posted by Roger Smith



A while back Bruise said he'd leave his khuks overnight for a month ( or something like that right Bruise?).
Click to expand...

I haven't done it yet. However, the temperature changes where I live aren't as great as where you are. Plus I was only going to leave one in the car. It would be foolish (even for me) to put em' all in the car. :)
 
Thanks for good help, all. If only I could get the dust bunnies to read this stuff.
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hey Uncle Bill, maybe you could just blow jewelers Rouge under the bed in a fine powder and coat the little bugger's "fur" then when they scurry around they'll polish everything in sight. Also works for cats, squirrels(that aren't going on the grill), wives....;) :D
 
I even asked uncle bill if I could get a bare HI or villager khuk--ie no handles--I could just GET a villager for all that goes--and grey milspec parker it--resharpen and redo the handles.

I think UB misunderstood what i was sayin. I would still want all the HI markings on the blade.

I love tinkering....hehhhhh..my glocks never need it though. I think ive finally found a knife as tough as they are:D :eek: :D :D
 
Yes I double posted...KHUK me for..well on second thaught DONT..

I didnt enven know what PROOFHYDE was...thanx dudes!!

new terms:(maybe??)

khukurite--US!! who else??
Khuk YOU buddy!!---yeah it means EXACTLY what you think only works better!!
"go khuk yourself": enemies only..
"Im gonna khuk you up.."
"khuk it!! Im goin 2 the Cantina..."

substitution works so well now that i found u guyz!!
 
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