someone ruined a great knife

Gehazi

Gehazi

Joined
Jun 30, 2013
Messages
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I bought a very cheap , early bura , a very small knife for 70 dollars off of the ebay, was combination horn and bone handle, the previous owner absolutely ruined the knife, and fricken wheel ground the edge off it , I was wondering if its possible or practical for me to ship it back to HI to have the edge properly reforged? and if not does anyone know an american they would say could reliably reforge, re harden and preserve this knife?
otherwise its very elegant , ill post some pictures later, but i was wondering if HI actually does repairs , I am absolutely willing to pay the price of the knife over again to have it properly fixed.
 
Unfortunately, it would not be cost effective or worthwhile to send I back to Nepal.
As far as HI doing repairs, I am the warranty return/repair dept.
An experienced knifemaker could reforge the blade.

Post some pics or mail me some to post, so we can see how bad it is.
I very much detest the usage of powered grinders for sharpening.
To hear that a Bura blade was ruined in this matter, while not surprising, still dismays.
 
Horn and bone?? Surely that would all have to come off and be redone if its that bad. We shall all get prepared for this one now before the pics come up. There is a "Barf" icon here somewhere isnt there? Ah...there it is:barf::barf::barf: "Warning graphic images!" Dont know if I want to see this one?
 
They didn't have pictures or description of the knife in their ad? Seems to me if you paid better than new price for a ruined knife, you should be able to return it for a refund.
 
Rat Finkenstein said:
They didn't have pictures or description of the knife in their ad? Seems to me if you paid better than new price for a ruined knife, you should be able to return it for a refund.
Click to expand...
I think Gehazi bought it (cheap) knowing in what shape it is. He just wants to give it a spa treatment now.
 
There are some threads around here about how to sharpen a khukuri. Sounds like yours needs a lot more work than usual, but being a small knife it should be doable. Maybe others remember where those threads are, or you can find it with a search.

Being a Bura blade it might be worth sending it to a forumite who has some experience in this area. Again, being a small knife it won't cost too much to ship it round trip.
 
yeah I thought it would be impractical to ship back, but am fully willing to pay a forumite to repair this knife, esp the illustrious karda, I will try to take a picture today , and yeah the edge was ground to a wedge on both sides -- this was hard to see in the ebay ad, but I didnt really want to send it back after finding it, it is still bura marked , steel he forged .
thanks for help will post pics today or tommorrow depending on work , huzzah .

this knife is overall only about 11 inches long, probably 15 ounces, blade about 8 inches-- this is def not a warranty thing but a "i just want to get this fixed" thing, so 120 or so dollars would not be too much for me to get this edge fixed
 
That should be fixable as long as he didn't grind through the hardened edge-doesn't sound like he took that much off. Pics would be a huge help.
 
Taking it apart and reforging it would destroy all the things that make it a Bura-especially the hardening/heat treat. It could be rehardened and retempered but it would be a different knife.
 
J W Bensinger is completely right.

I am both a bladesmith and a professional knife sharpener. I have found sometimes things look worse than they are and can be restored, but other times seemingly minor problems are unfixable.

Post some pics and I'm sure many people will comment.

Thank you for preventing further harm to that knife.
 
Basically all the person who ground it has done is accelerate the wear that would have happened with use- instead of taking ten years of hard use to get to this point, it took him fifteen minutes. Yes, you'll have a slightly narrower and lighter Bura when it's fixed, but you'll have a Bura you can actually use, which is pretty cool. Take heart.
My collecting weakness for years was Filipino blades, and I got alot for very little $$ that had been badly mauled- chips, bends, regrinds- you can work with anything that's not actually through-and-through cracked or ground into the soft part of the blade.
 
It could be- ya just gotta hope not. It should show though- most folks who grind the temper out of blades don't think to hide it afterward. One hopes.
 



you can see both the sacred bura mark from pre 2005 post 2002 just after they started using initials in english character, and the horribly abused and and angular ground edge

knife is very small , as you can see not much steel too it , only about 9 or 11 inches long, handle about 3 1/2 inches


I see now how impractical reforging is just looking at it, but as said perhaps all it needs is a professional sharpening


in full glowray
 
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noticed something while looking at my knives , bura ( maybe) used a distinct vertical crescent on all the knives I have , I have even found it on one of the apprentice knives , upright crescent with candle , but I also notice the horizontal crescent with LB seems to be around , is this a different man? or the same man? I know bura used the upright crescent and that did not seem to change much, so just tell me what you think about that , is this really a bura? or someone with the initials LB, I got a keshar hornhandled ycs karda and it had the same horizontal crescent, I am starting to think all horizontal crescents are not actually buras, but only upright vertical crescents, is this wrong ?
 
fair enough , i guess thats why they made them start putting initials on it too , because they changed marks all the time
 
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