Hey there Bill. The mini is in a bit of a weird place in terms of functionality.
Generally, the people that are buying these are not actually using them for chopping tasks, and are really more looking for a camp knife that is large and recurved. So with this utility in mind, we keep our minis quite light and lean so that they can slice and carve well, while also being low weight and portable.
With this said though, we have felt in the last few years that the 9 inch and the 7 inch could benefit from a slightly thicker build, so that it gives more of the feel of a full-sized Kukri, and also gives people a taste of some of the chopping power that they would get from a full-sized version. Through custom enquiries we've been experimenting in this space by increasing the spine thickness and altering the taper profile to give a beefier blade that still has a bit of thunk to it. The 9" feels great with such changes but the 7" still feels a bit flimsy compared to the goal.
Something else that we've done is experiment with redesigning the mini-line entirely. What we did was create significantly broader blades that pack more power into a shorter distance as well as allow for very lean steep bevels which permit a thicker spine without loss of cutting performance. It is a budhune-like pattern with specific influence from north indian khukuris. The guys like the 5" version but it's a strange knife- very thick and short and stubby. It certainly chops better than the previous mini but we feel that perhaps the size is just too short to try and replicate this utility and feel. This has left us with the 7" and 9" versions, which look cool and feel great. They're little monsters and chop like they're about 3" longer than they are. A recent 9" weighed 620g for reference. As we've made more of these and experimented with different spine thicknesses it is becoming clear that the 5" version should be dropped and the 7" and 9" should become their own pattern (potentially with a larger 11" version added). without the 5" version this cannot replace the mini though and would need to be a new model- for now we're calling it the Compact but this is not a final name. An example of the 9" blade pattern (but not handle shape)
can be seen here. A
7" version can be seen here. A
9" version with handle can be seen here.
This leaves us where we started- considering spine thickness changes for the mini for a bit more bulk. We also have a pattern for a 9" mk1 which could give a midpoint between the 9" Compact and the 9" mini. A 9" version of the mk1 may be a bit too ahistorical for what is a pretty accurate replica blade though and we wouldn't want to dilute this identity.
One of the things that we've done during this experimentation period to fill this functional gap for a mini chopper in our lineup is introduce the shorter lengths on the 2024 Falo. This has an 8 inch blade at 450g and a 10 inch blade at 550g. It features minimal distal taper so that there is plenty of steel further towards the tip for a chunky, powerful feel, and also a sturdiness in batoning and other hard-use camp tasks. We're considering dropping these down to 7mm in future so they're a bit more versatile- particularly if we go live with this Compact design to reduce overlap.
Take care,
Andrew and the team at Kailash
