Restoring & identifying an old kukri?

A

atomicthumbs

Joined
Jul 9, 2009
Messages
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Hi. I was looking for knife forums to ask about my kukri, and I found this one and decided to post. :)

I bought this kukri for $5 at a white elephant sale at my local church. It was on the top shelf "to keep any kids from messing with the big knife".

It's got a mostly rough surface, but some of it is still polished. It has some rust spots, and one very bad one. The handle has a small chunk out of it. The blade is dull.

One side of the kukri has a design on it made of small pits. I don't know what it is. The handle has circles of dots (painted, I think) around the rivets.

I just took a closer look at the pattern of pits on the blade, and part of it says "INDIA". It's hard to read because it's in a rough spot, though.

I have pictures. If you need to take a closer look at one, click it and click "original" or "large" at the top.


The kukri, with a AA battery for scale. On the left is where someone apparently went at it with an angle grinder and gave up.


Handle closeup. Chunk missing is on the top right in this picture.


Bad rust spot.


Tip of the blade, with more rust.


End of the handle.


"INDIA".


Part of the pattern, and the notch.


More pattern.


The sheath. It's in bad condition, and made of an unknown material. The kukri didn't come with either of the smaller knives.

Can anyone help me identify this knife, and tell me how to restore it? What kinds of tools and materials would I need?
 
There were many 'tourist' kukris made .I had one that was a very soft steel , I threw it out !
If it's a decent steel you might clean it up with successively finer wet/dry abrasives. Then you'd have a user.
 
I asked my friends, and one of them suggested electrolysis rust removal. Would that work well? What could I use to rustproof it afterwards?

(The others suggested using an Energizer battery instead of a Duracell with my knife, using windex wipes, and using a brass wire brush and steel wool.)
 
Naval Jelly, apply with old tooth brush, fine steel wool, dish scrubber to remove rust. Belt sander, grinder to restore edge. Then sharpen and use.
 
It is from India rather than Nepal, so collector's value is nil. This doesn't mean that it is a bad khuk, you will find this out when you resharpen the blade and see how it holds an edge.

For a $5 knife, I'd keep it as a beater and not invest too much time and money into it. Just take most of the rust off like in above, or you can use any handy oil on the blade & apply steel wool to remove the worst of the rust. No reason to take it back to a high polish unless you are incredibly bored. The metal fittings on the handle doesn't look well fit to the wood, if this causes 'hot spots' to your hands when chopping, you may want to remove & smooth some of the metal where it rubs. Don't take away any wood, those grooves and ribs are there to help you keep your grip when chopping.

Be careful when using a belt sander, if you get too aggressive and let the blade heat-up, you may have ruined the tempering of the edge. If you choose to go in this direction, keep a bucket of water next to you to dunk the blade whenever you feel the steel heating up.
 
Yeah looks like a $5 knife indded, definately a beater not a show piece, just be careful that the handle is properly attatched, my friend has a nice hole in his wall from playing with a junk one once...
 
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