Pattern welded khukuri

B

bellatheartist

Joined
Jun 25, 2001
Messages
88
Has any one ever thought about a pattern welded khukuri?

Me and Bob were talking about this yesterday and figured out that it would probably work to by a bar of pattern welded steeel and see what the kamis could do with it....

Any way just a though....what do you guys think?

Bella
 
Excellent idea.

Probably not worth the hassle. Due to a whole bunch of factors, starting with it'd be something the kamis had no experience with.

Believe me it's probably considered by half if not more of the folks on the forum. The Indian stuff put out by Windlass does not have a great reputation, and the american produced stock is too expensive and too exotic in composition probably.
 
Yeah it would deffinatly be a very big hassal and exspense but it would also be very very awesome looking :)

Any just a thought and probably never anything more than a thought

Bella
 
Which style of Khukuri did you have in mind for this special project? An exotic hardwood handle too? Hmmmmm...?
 
I've seen a couple of examples of khuks that had laminated blades, but I'm not sure if there are any out there with full-on pattern welded blades, I kinda doubt there are due to the fact that khuks with simple lamination are quite rare.

From what I understand, the modern Khuk came into existance when good-quality steel was no longer difficult to get, and thus pattern welding-which was basically (like many other techniques of antiquity) only done to get the best out of material that was not of uniform quality-was no longer necesarry.

Kamis, whether now or during WW2, never needed to pattern weld,fold, laminate, etc because they always had good quality homogenous stuff around-they just concentrated on making the best tempered stuff they could. In fact, when I think about it, Nepal is kinda like Rome in its very pragmatic approach to weapons.

regards
Matt
 
Old laminated blades do exist. I have a few of different types and will post some pictures. I have wondered why the folks who do make all this fancy looking "Damascus" steel haven't made a khukuri blade. I think it would be great looking.
 
This forum counts Ivan Campos and Achim W., knifemakers as members. Not sure what Ivan's experience has been with pattern welded steel, but Achim has been experimenting with wootz(true damascus) and I for one, would love to see a 15 inch Sirupati style khukuri in wootz.....
 
A 15" Sirupati, ladder pattern except for the Sword of Shiva - Possibly a raindrop pattern, or inlays there.........Raises the drool factor to flood-control levels:p
 
5160 interspersed with thin sheets of nickel ought to be doable, and without changing the qualities of the steel too much from what the kamis are familiar with.

Explaining it to the kamis would be something else, however. Lots of luck there. Then again, it might not be all that unfamiliar to them given the malaysian keris.

Be sure and call me when there's news, and I won't be holding my breath til then.
 
I know about laminated blades in Khuks, but wootz and mohammed's ladder are really escaping what Khukuri's have been and will be. Who knows if peformance might even be compromised until the kamis got it *perfect* plus the hours of practice and lots of wasted steel trying to get it downpat, which Birghorka really doesn't have. It's a cool idea in some respects, but I really think it's pretty unlikely...

regards
Matt
 
As much as a wootz khukuri would be cool to look at, wootz steel usually has somewhere around one and a half percent carbon. That's the range you want to quench in oil. If a kami tried a slow water quench on the blade it would almost surely crack and be ruined. A leaf spring has only a little over one half of a percent carbon and the rest of the hardness is made up from the chromium content. This is much easier to water quench. As for pattern welding with leaf spring steel (5160) the chromium makes it difficult to forge weld.
 
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