"Twelve degrees, nose hairs freeze," as the old-timers say. We've had a lot more frozen nose hair locally this winter than in a while.
One of the sweet pleasures of living is going outside on a cold day, khukuri in hand, to split some firewood. But I've had trouble from time to time year-round with handle cracking, especially the horn, in our dry climate. And when Yvsa and others cautioned a while back about the hazards to handles of sudden temperature and/or humidity changes, it made me a bit wary of lugging any of my khukuris whose handle is uncracked from a warm house to an 8-degree outside. So I turned to what I now think of as my cold-weather khukuri. Boy, talk about specialization.
My cold-weather khukuri is one of about a dozen steel-mounted villagers Bill got in last fall, maybe October. They're Ang Kholas, about 15 and a half inches long, with steel rather than brass buttcap and bolster. These were a bunch that Bill in a moment of exuberance described as being the best villagers he'd EVER seen, as I recall.
When mine first arrived I wasn't all that taken with it. Bill had cautioned that the korda and chakma were worthless. More important, I found the handle uncomfortable. It's two slabs of horn, Chirawa-style I believe is the term, with the blade tang protruding a few mm beyond the boundaries of the horn, which made a tight grasp kind of a prickly proposition.
But with winter here, I figured the two-slab handle would be much more resistant to cracking due to shrinkage and expansion in the cold outdoors than a one-piece handle. Plus I'm wearing lined gloves, so the Chirawa handle discomfort that's so noticeable barehanded is now a nonissue. So the Ang Khola villager is what I've been using. And that little thing is a big-time chopper. Either that or the cold dry air has dried out our firewood further and made it really easy to cut. It is such a blast! I feel like somebody doing a karate demonstration where they break a stack of boards or bricks with a single blow. The blade shape seems resistant to getting stuck in the wood; instead, the chips and divots fly in all directions.
I am now so favorably disposed to this khukuri that I have promised it I will take it camping regularly when the weather warms up. I'll leave behind the little karda and be sure to take along a glove, and we will be in business.
One of the sweet pleasures of living is going outside on a cold day, khukuri in hand, to split some firewood. But I've had trouble from time to time year-round with handle cracking, especially the horn, in our dry climate. And when Yvsa and others cautioned a while back about the hazards to handles of sudden temperature and/or humidity changes, it made me a bit wary of lugging any of my khukuris whose handle is uncracked from a warm house to an 8-degree outside. So I turned to what I now think of as my cold-weather khukuri. Boy, talk about specialization.
My cold-weather khukuri is one of about a dozen steel-mounted villagers Bill got in last fall, maybe October. They're Ang Kholas, about 15 and a half inches long, with steel rather than brass buttcap and bolster. These were a bunch that Bill in a moment of exuberance described as being the best villagers he'd EVER seen, as I recall.
When mine first arrived I wasn't all that taken with it. Bill had cautioned that the korda and chakma were worthless. More important, I found the handle uncomfortable. It's two slabs of horn, Chirawa-style I believe is the term, with the blade tang protruding a few mm beyond the boundaries of the horn, which made a tight grasp kind of a prickly proposition.
But with winter here, I figured the two-slab handle would be much more resistant to cracking due to shrinkage and expansion in the cold outdoors than a one-piece handle. Plus I'm wearing lined gloves, so the Chirawa handle discomfort that's so noticeable barehanded is now a nonissue. So the Ang Khola villager is what I've been using. And that little thing is a big-time chopper. Either that or the cold dry air has dried out our firewood further and made it really easy to cut. It is such a blast! I feel like somebody doing a karate demonstration where they break a stack of boards or bricks with a single blow. The blade shape seems resistant to getting stuck in the wood; instead, the chips and divots fly in all directions.
I am now so favorably disposed to this khukuri that I have promised it I will take it camping regularly when the weather warms up. I'll leave behind the little karda and be sure to take along a glove, and we will be in business.
