Cobalt
Platinum Member
- Joined
- Dec 23, 1998
- Messages
- 17,663
Bill, being a modest man will not usually discuss or make comparisons of his knives with the competition and out of respect ofr him and his family I will not either. However, what I will do is state some facts about his knukuri's so you can get your own conclusions.
I now have 5 khukuri's from bill and I have only known about khukuri's for maybe 2 months, since Cliff S. and Will K. set me straight on what they considered to possibly be the toughest knives on the market.
I always brought up that a good 1/4 inch knife is about as strong a knife as you can get. Knives this thick are commonly used as prybars because they can take it. And I emphatically stated at one point that "NO ONE MAKES A KNIFE THICKER THAN 5/16 INCH". Boy was I wrong.
I have 4 styles; The Sirupati, the Ang Khola(2), the British Army Service(BAS) and the WWII. The thinnest of all of these is the BAS which is approximately 3/8 inch thick or 6/16 inch thick. I don't know of any other knife as thick as this and this is his thinnest knife(I think, correct me if I'm wrong Bill). My WWII, 20 inch Sirupati and 15 inch Ang Khola'a are all 7/16 inch thick. And the 20 inch Ang Khola, is somewere around 5/8 inch thick or 10/16 inch thick.
This means that if you attempt to pry with these knives you are not likely to bend or break them unless you are king kong. So you may think that a knife like this would be unwieldy. All I can say is that none of the ones I have are unwieldy as I can slice and chop incredibly fast with them.
Another area of concern is usually the steel and heat treatment. I will not go into great detail into this as there are other HI board members more qualified to do so, but suffice to say that these khukuri's are differentially tempered from the edge to the spine for maximum strength and the steel used is 5160- a medium carbon steel that provides excellent toughness and very good edge retention. Anotherquality of these knives and especially edges is that they are forged into shape from flat stock, no machining. This adds to the hardness and edge retention.
The handles are either some form of hardwood or buffalo horn. I have both and like both equally.
They make excellent show pieces or wall hangers due to their quality but they are intended for many lifetimes of serious abuse. A testimonial to the fact that Bill Martino encourages people to use them hard is the fact that he offers what is probably the best guaranty out there. Bill, please post your guaranty, since I do not want to put words on your mouth.
I had only intended on buying one, but after learning about them I bought two, and after seeing them I bought two more and WON one. I currently have 4 or 5 on order, I cant remember now. I think most of Bills customers end up getting more than one after they buy their first knife.
Bill, as you will note I did not denigrate competition as I did not mention any sompetition as I feel there is really no competition to these khukuri's.
Bill,is there any way to transfer some of the more informative postings over here from what has been discussed in the past?
I now have 5 khukuri's from bill and I have only known about khukuri's for maybe 2 months, since Cliff S. and Will K. set me straight on what they considered to possibly be the toughest knives on the market.
I always brought up that a good 1/4 inch knife is about as strong a knife as you can get. Knives this thick are commonly used as prybars because they can take it. And I emphatically stated at one point that "NO ONE MAKES A KNIFE THICKER THAN 5/16 INCH". Boy was I wrong.
I have 4 styles; The Sirupati, the Ang Khola(2), the British Army Service(BAS) and the WWII. The thinnest of all of these is the BAS which is approximately 3/8 inch thick or 6/16 inch thick. I don't know of any other knife as thick as this and this is his thinnest knife(I think, correct me if I'm wrong Bill). My WWII, 20 inch Sirupati and 15 inch Ang Khola'a are all 7/16 inch thick. And the 20 inch Ang Khola, is somewere around 5/8 inch thick or 10/16 inch thick.
This means that if you attempt to pry with these knives you are not likely to bend or break them unless you are king kong. So you may think that a knife like this would be unwieldy. All I can say is that none of the ones I have are unwieldy as I can slice and chop incredibly fast with them.
Another area of concern is usually the steel and heat treatment. I will not go into great detail into this as there are other HI board members more qualified to do so, but suffice to say that these khukuri's are differentially tempered from the edge to the spine for maximum strength and the steel used is 5160- a medium carbon steel that provides excellent toughness and very good edge retention. Anotherquality of these knives and especially edges is that they are forged into shape from flat stock, no machining. This adds to the hardness and edge retention.
The handles are either some form of hardwood or buffalo horn. I have both and like both equally.
They make excellent show pieces or wall hangers due to their quality but they are intended for many lifetimes of serious abuse. A testimonial to the fact that Bill Martino encourages people to use them hard is the fact that he offers what is probably the best guaranty out there. Bill, please post your guaranty, since I do not want to put words on your mouth.
I had only intended on buying one, but after learning about them I bought two, and after seeing them I bought two more and WON one. I currently have 4 or 5 on order, I cant remember now. I think most of Bills customers end up getting more than one after they buy their first knife.
Bill, as you will note I did not denigrate competition as I did not mention any sompetition as I feel there is really no competition to these khukuri's.
Bill,is there any way to transfer some of the more informative postings over here from what has been discussed in the past?
