Shop 2 15" Sirupati test

S

Sutcliffe

Joined
Dec 5, 1998
Messages
659
Put my recent acquisition to a test in the field this weekend. The handle fit was better than I expected, although I did take a file to the brass buttcap to make it a little kinder to my hand during testing. The blade was a beauty. Yeah there were still many rough grind marks and the electric engraver looks rather cheap, but the lines and grace of the Sirupati are much more pleasing to the eye than my AK. The scabbard was well made, but doesn't snugly secured the blade like my shop 1 AK. Carda and Chakma were rather crude, but should be functional.
I took it to a woodlot and tried to break the tip. After ramming the point into an old, burnt redwood stump and then wrenching the handle sideways the bladetip seemed fine. I tried it on all sorts of other woods, live and dead with the same result. Chopping various softwoods proved that the blade was a good one. It bit deep and shed large hunks of wood without any problem. I checked the edge after 2o minutes or so to see if it had started to burr. It didn't feel like it, but I burnished it anyway.
My brother was watching my antics and jokingly said I should chop on an old truck wheel. Not wanting to notch the blade I struck the wheel several times with the flat of the blade. Tang and blade held up fine. It did loosen the buttcap though. After this it seemed that vibration was much more pronounced than before. Although by now my hand was telling me that my session should be nearing an end. I learned this after I finished my chopping session and found that the freshly filed cap had made numerous shallow cuts in the palm of my hand. Nothing that drew blood, and I didn't take notice until after I had cleaned the blade and oiled it. A generous amount of epoxy under the cap(if I can find a way of applying it) should hold it in place.
I will continue my testing later to see if I can correct the loose buttcap.

 
Sut,

I have a 15" AK that had a loose buttcap, and here is what I did to correct the situtation. First, I drilled a 1/8" hole at the buttcap/handle junction (I tried to judge where the tang meets the buttcap, and offset the drill hole slightly, till I could see the tang with a bore light), and used an insulin syringe (a friend of mine is diabetic) with the needle removed to fill the cavity with a longset epoxy. Using the syringe allows the epoxy to go into the hole pretty efficently. Apparently, this khukri also had a fairly large cavity around the tang as well, judging by the amount of epoxy that was needed. After the epoxy set (I gave it a day and a half, just to make sure, and set the knife with the tip down, to allow the epoxy to run down the tang) I lightly sanded and polished where the drilled hole was, dremeled around the buttcap, and gently contoured the area where the handle "bit" into my hand. Afterwards, I tested the blade again, just to make sure the buttcap would not loosen again, and it passed with flying colors! I noticed a small amount of vibration before I worked on it, which I suspect was due to the cavity around the tang inside of the horn handle. After working on it, there is NO vibration whatsoever, even in heavy chopping!
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I pounded on the buttcap with a hammer and a piece of leather (to prevent marring) to see if the repair would be durable, and there was NO sign of it loosening. I feel that the epoxy sealed the cavity inside the handle, as well as probably stabilizing the interior portion of the horn handle, making it almost bulletproof! As a little side note, my wife works with anilyne dyes (they're used in the theatre industry, and come in a powder form) which apparently mix well with epoxy, so if your concerned about the drill hole appearance, you could mix some with the epoxy and use it at the last step when you finish filling the hole, and then sand it out. With the one I did, I didn't use the dye, and you really have to look to see where the repair was made. In any case, this blade is a hard user, and the loss of comestic appearance is offset by the increased durability of the repair. Give it a try, as you'll probably find the vibration problem will go away as well, given that enough epoxy gets into the handle well enough.

Take care,
John Johnson
 
John-Thanks for the step by step. with this modification it should become a first class backpacking knife.
Always a pleasure,
sutcliffe
 
Just figured I'd chime in here about the whole vibration thing. I had a 20" shop 2 sirupati that started vibrating when the flat buttcap got loose.

Luckily, because the flat cap could spin a bit on the tang, I could dab epoxy on all edges of the inside of the buttcap and on all edges of the horn surface as well. It is now solid and nonvibrating and it was easy to do.

Perhaps another argument in favor of the flat buttcap, though I am still wondering whether the Kamis have some practical reason in favor of the two-piece kind.

-Dave

------------------
"Smooth Bastard..."
 
I've got the 15" Sirupati Kami rehandled in oak his last trip. Always said I was gonna take it down to fit my hand like the 12" baby does once it came back from Cliff, and see if it handled like baby.

Got it taken down, just need to sand and seal it. The 12" baby Sirupati has always been the quickest and most accurate of my khuks. An 8" bladed scalpel.

The 15" Sirupati ain't as quick or accurate or good feeling. It's 10+" blade feels only 97% as magically charged as baby. 12" for my left hand, 15" for my right. Aaaaahhhhh!!!
 
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