Thanks Craig!
I am new to "real" kukris and when I saw his table I had to take a look. The only kukris I have seen is the ones in knife catalogues,(you know the ones I mean
", plus what I have seen in pictures,(got a grate book about blades of the world and saw alot of nice ones in there), but i did not expect what I found when I picked one up! The first one that drew my attention was a Cheetlang(spelling?) I always liked the slim versions. It looked nice with the pommle swell but wasn't real thrilled about it. I then looked at a Serupati (spelling?), again I liked this one because of the brass inlay in the blade, but again all in all I wasn't overly excited about these knives. By this time (I had been looking over them quite intently for awhile) I think George was waiting for me to ask to pick one up, when I didn't he came over and asked which one I wanted to see. He gave my apprehension a kick in the ass is what he did!
So still relunctant I asked to see the serupati, he opened the case and handed it to me I like the way it looked (looked at one side only) but it was a weebit to heavy for me and there was a small crack in the handle. Hmmm I thought to myself "these are only better in looks compared to the pices of crap in those knife catalogse. So I handed it back and he asked me which other one I wanted to see, (he must have been watching me as intently as I was looking at his blades because he new I wanted to look at another one), I then go over to the Cheetlang. He brings it out of the case and hands it to me. Boy this baby changed my mind! That pommle swell felt, well, dangit it felt sexual! Plus it felt light. Thats what I like a big knife thats light in the hand. Now on to what this whole rant is about. I didn't inspect the first one carefully because I saw the crack and thought they would all be (as what I thought at the time) crap that was polished. I inspected this one more carefully, no cracks and to my complete surprise when I went to turn the blade over to look at the other side I noticed the spine. Holly SH*T!!!!!!!!!! This sucker is thick! I couldn't believe how thick that spine is! and still be light? No friggin way man! George must have seen the look on my face because when I looked up he was smiling at me, (I would have liked to of seen the look on my face also!
). I then started seeing all the subtleties that made this knife light inspite of the fact that it had this massive hurkin spine. The distle taper, the hollows just below the spine, the grind going all the way up to the spine, the distle taper of the full tang. All of these nueances made me fall in love with the Cheetlang, and do you know what sealed the love affair? THE PRICE!!! I would have bought this sexy devil if it would have been $400.00, but at $129.00 how can you go wrong I ask you. I must say when I saw the price tags on these knives I thought they were item numbers. It didn't register in my mind that these monsters of metal were this inexpensive! My god if I had only known way back when this forum started I would have every darn one of them. Well of course when I got home I went straight to the computer and went to this forum reading up on everything you guys have written, and in my readings I found why the Serupati's handle was cracked, because it's horn and the tempurature changes during shipping from across the globe shrank the handle and it cracked. Boy I felt stupid! These are beutiful knives and I will cherish this knife as if it was given to me by the man who made it himself.
Sorry this post is so long but I can't say enough good things about these knives now. they are wonderfull and deadly works of art. Thank you gentlemen for this forum and everybodies informative posts. It is an honor to be here. Oh yes, in case you havn't figured it out yet I have now found another forum to frequent, quite often I might add.
Thanks again everyone and a super special thanks to George for getting me to handle these knives and in the process fall in love with them.
Robert
