What made you buy a kukri?

Cpl Punishment

Cpl Punishment

Joined
Jan 28, 2006
Messages
7,035
OK, it's late (I have to get ready to go back on 3rd shift tonight, so I have to stay up) and I'm bored. So, I went reading through the old threads, and this one hasn't come up in a while, and I thought it'd be a good subject, especially with all the new blood in the shark pool these days.

So, what made you buy a kukri, HI or other?

For me, it had nothing to do with the mystique behind the design (Mostly because I didn't know any of the mystique, and I really don't know much of it now). In fact, when I first encountered the kukri design, I had a very negative impression of them. Mostly they were the cheap, Bud-K or Cold Steel "bent machetes", had short blades (even at the time, I had some Bowie blades that were longer), and were owned by "fanboyz" who thought they were the ultimate death machine and "kewlies because they're even more exotic than a katana" -- guys that did nothing with them but pose in their ninja outfits and discuss how good they would be in all the ninja fights people get into after they graduate high school. :rolleyes:

Anyway, many ninja-free years later I come across a couple guys on the 'net ranting and raving about how great these Himalayan Imports kukris are. "yeah, yeah, more fanboyz." thought I. Then I saw some pictures, especially spine shots. OK, those aren't machetes. I checked out the web site, ehich eventually lead me here.

It was probably a year later that they had finally worked on me enough and I had to have one. I also finally figured out the website isn't updated often, and new products got released here, and if you wanted something in particular, you needed to ask. So I did. And the rest is history.
 
I wanted a heavy duty work blade for taking care of some forested land (as a fun diversion from the chainsaw) and to have as an emergency blade to keep in the vehicle. The forged spring steel CAK seemed like the ticket. That was my first khukuri, but not the last.
 
Well..........
I first heard about khukuri's from reading old comic books in the 1970's, where the ad's were for stuff in the back of them. Mom and pops would never buy one for me though. I always kept one of the ad's around so i'd never forget, but evetually lost it. I began researching the famous gurkhas and the mystique behind these blades and the more i looked the more interested i became. A lifetime later i came into some cash and started looking around on the bay and picked up a lion head, as it looked pretty much like what i saw in the comic books..... come to find out, these are indian made and usually junk. I began searching for a real khuk and looked at all the sites and vendors we all are well aware of now and need not be mentioned. Like you, thru reading in some other forum , i found the H.I. retail site and eventually joined bladeforums looking to buy a villager model khukuri.....once here i read about how to order and plenty more...about UB and some of the beginnings of H.I. After ordering a memorial salyan i was hooked but good and have never felt the need to look elsewhere for my khuk needs.
 
My first kuk was a cheap one I found on ebay, purchased just for the heck of it. Shortly after it arrived, I had an unexpected experience with it that got me hooked.

This particular kuk turned out to be a pretty nice example, probably a modern-made villager rather than a tourist piece. Nothing pretty, but solid and sharp.

I was using it to chop some rosebushes one afternoon, hacking away as I would with a machete. It worked OK but was nothing special. I was tired, not really paying attention, and defaulted into just sort of lightly swiping at the bushes rather than chopping at them. To my surprise, the branches just fell away like magic. It was like swinging a light saber around.

I have yet to really identify what's different about this stroke - the best way I can describe it is that it's sort of a wiping motion rather than chopping motion. I can't do it every time, but I can do it often enough that this particular tool is now my current favorite for this sort of light work.

I like HIs as choppers, for doing the heavier work that would probably break my little ebay kuk. The best application is for branches in the two or three inch range - my hatchet is too delicate, my machetes too thin, and my axe requires two hands. The HI kuks just eat these things for breakfast. I have three HI choppers, all bought used, and of the three, one of them fits perfectly in my hands. I expect to modify one of the others, and I'll probably sell the third.

For me, the perfect kuk would have a full length, narrow tang, with lots of handle options that could be easily swapped back and forth. The butt of the handle would come with a separate cap, either heavy or light, allowing you to adjust the balance as well as the grip. I realize that it would not be practical to offer this - all the folks who would be really excited by this product could probably fit into one large room - but I might build one for myself some day, just to have something to play with.
 
What made you buy a kukri?
Click to expand...

The voices...

I mean, I had been interested in military surplus firearms for a while. I think I started looking for a military-style khukuri because they were so different from my rifles' bayonets in both function and form. At any rate, my search inevitably led me to a BAS. The BAS got me interested in HI, and the rest is history!
 
My great Uncle fought in Malaysia during his national service. He came home with a kukri he picked up there. I saw it in his kitchen drawer and thought it looked very unusual - he explained what it was and from that moment on I wanted one. It took 20+ years but I got one eventually.
 
I saw them in a Collector's Armory catalog a friend had when we were kids back in the early 80's.


Years later I saw a guy at a local flea market who was selling them with a bunch of 'ninja' type blades. He tried to convince me that the karda and chakmak were, in fact, " knuckle knives" that were to be held between the knuckles, I guess like Wolverine from X-Men. After trying to point out that they were skinning knives(I did not know one of them was a sharpener at that time)he proceeded to explain that his martial arts training not only made him a 'killing machine' with a kukhuri, but he was absolutely correct in the proper usage of the 'knuckle knives'...



What a tool.....
 
When I was about 10 years old my Uncle, a WW11 Veteran called Bill, took me into a Army Surplus store and picked up a kukri that was for sale and told me tales of having seen the Gurkhas use them against the Japanese in the Pacific ...they came out of the encounters with their heads still on top of their shoulders unlike the 'Japs'.

As a result of this I handled the blade with reverence and despite his offer to buy it for me, declined. Forty years later how I wish I had made a different decision that day.

But it was a friend back in 2004 who got me interested in Khukuri's and I joined Blade Forums under a long forgotten name thru a long forgotten ISP and on a long junked computer. I read a new Uncle Bill's posts about Khuk's.

But still I didn't buy one.

Then this last March my friend moved closer to me and said he was going to bring his kukri's around to show them to me. My post on another Forum about what to look for in a 'good' kukri lead me back to HI ...and after months of looking at the dotd posts, HI's website and after much thought, decided the only way I would have peace of mind was to buy a HI Khukuri.

But instead I caught HI fever ... and I have no intention of stopping my HI acquisitions, Khuk's, Karda's, Swords, and Bowies.
 
Just for the record, ninjas DO indeed love Khukuris. I gave Hatsumi Sensei an HI M-43 for his birthday one year and he said thank you and immediately asked me to order the largest one I could find.
(a 25" sirupati.)
 
Not slighting ninjas in the slightest in my post, but you would have had to have met this clown! He was one of those guys who give real martial artists a bad name. He was no more a ninja than the security guard at the shopping center is, despite being called a 'Mall-Ninja'...


If you listen to Bob & Tom on the radio in the morning, he was a 'Donny Baker' type..
 
When I was a kid, I saw a news piece on the Gurkhas, either on W5 or The Fifth Estate. The narrator, over footage of tough little Nepalis in uniform, claimed that "[the khukuri] can cut off a head in a single stroke". Needless to say, this is the sort of thing most kids consider "totally radical", "gnarly", et cetera. In my adolescence, I slowly began collecting knives and turned my sights to khuks after getting some more orthodox blades, Spydercos and "tactical" stuff. I wrote a letter to a little company called Himalayan Imports (wonder what ever happened to 'em?) and a nice, prolific fellow named Uncle Bill wrote back, including all sorts of xeroxed pics of the wares available at the time. I had my heart set on the janawar katne back then, since I was a teenage male who wasn't really looking for a user. Bill managed to talk me out of it somehow. Likewise with the kora. I recall him giving a little bit of the background on that style of sword, and throwing in something like "but they're not really well made". Heh, ya couldn't fault the guy for being up front like that.

Most likely because of shipping and duty considerations, I opted to get my first khuk from a dealer in Alberta instead. In retrospect, I'd say it was close to HI Villager standards, performed well for its size, though the handle was definitely not crafted for western hands. I still have it packed away in a knife drawer at home.

Ultimately, I think what really drew me to khuks was a combination of the childish fascination with them as a weapon, and the more practical appreciation for their repute as compact choppers. The idea of having a tool that is also fun and beautiful (to my eyes at least) is very appealing.
 
The warranty, price and spine thickness. In that order.:D And, as an added bonus it fulfills all my ninja needs, kung-fu hi yah.
 
I was poking around the Net looking at different sword sites, and somehow I came across a post RE: Uncle Bill, the Everest Katana, etc.
I kept reading and came across the link for the HI Website, and here I learned about Khuks. I had never even given a khuk a second look UNTIL I found the HI Community, and well...now I own a few of em!!
I think the Orig Article was by Jim March and His middle 1800's Edo Period Katana blade that is the pattern for the HI Everest Katana.


" Older men declare war. But it is youth
that must fight and die."- Herbert Hoover
 
Growing up, I was enthralled by Grandpa's tales, of Gorkha (sp?) bravery and the big, fearsome knives they used. I bought several khuks and KSO's of varying quality then sorta lost interest in them for several years. This past October, I discovered the HI website, and fell in love all over again.
 
Was chopping some kindling, using a one-handed axe.... and caught my thumb. Ooops! :jerkit:
Remembered how even when I was a child my father's kukri from WW2 always seemed very "controllable" to handle..... :)
But it was a few hundred miles from here. :(
So for reasons of digital conservation I bought a new kukri for chopping.... and then a sirupate for brush clearing and branch-trimming.... and then a big chopper .... and then another kukri..... etc.
:o
And that is how come I now have several kukris, blades from 11" to 17", dates range from the Victorian era to the present day..... :cool:
 
I saw my first Kukri in a pawn shop on my way home from high school some 30+ years ago...it was a big old 28in tourist model like ones that I'm sure you all have seen, Blk horn handle, blade engraved with the word India etc. it was love at first sight I shelled out my hard earned $10 and took it home, still have it, still love it as a momento of a time long past.
 
I first learned about Khuks poring over my father's copy G. C. Stone's book as a kid. The Khukuri and the Kris were about the most fascinating things I had ever seen. When I was a young teenager, my folks gave me a touristy Khuk they had acquired from a cousin who had picked it up at a gun show. It was my very first fixed blade. I took it camping and hiking a few times, and it tackled a number of backyard chores -all in spite of it's less than stellar quality. I finally killed it doing trail maintenance on my highschool's cross-country course. (Can you imagine a time when a kid could carry a 12" knife sticking out of his bookbag to school and no one think anything of it?) :eek:

Years later, I found Bladeforums, and eventually picked up a Gurkha House WWII (Much more like HI's BAS) in Rosewood. I also picked up another in stabilized birdseye maple and their #1 Ken Onion 'pig sticker' in horn. Then Mr. Gottleib decided he was tired of the Khukri business and chucked everything to go sell German daggers. :rolleyes:

I quickly discovered the Cantina, and have fed my cravings for both Khuks and camaraderie a steady and high quality diet ever since. :)
 
I first heared of Kukris from reading a Cold Steel Catalog back in 1999. Then I joined Bladeforums in July of 2000 and started wandering around it. Mostly hung out in the SOG and Camillus forums because thats what brought me here. The Kukri interested me do to it's unique shape, history and chopping potential.

Found the Gurkha House and HI forums and started reading about hand made Khukuris. Desided to ask questions from the guys here at HI and in August of 2001 I was trying to get a Deal of the day but kept getting beat out by the sharks (Little did they know I was soon to become one). Uncle Bill noticed that and offered me an oldered used 15" horn handled AK with a 1/2" thick spine that needed some work. I jumped at the oportunity and sent payment the say day he sent it out.

The blade really impressed me bespite being used, having a bent tip and 2 cracks in the handle plus a crack in the sheath. I cleaned up the knife, fixed the handle and straightened the tip. Scanned in pictures of the repair work to Uncle Bill and thanked him. A month or two later I snagged a Deal of the day and tried to snag a second but someone beat me again. Uncle Bill offered me another used Khukuri that needed some TLC and I got it also. After that I've come to Uncle Bill and Yangdu for all my Khukri needs.

Heber
 
Good point! While I can't say for sure if Yangdu played a critical role in me becoming interested in buying a khukuri, she is definitely a big part of me buying several khukuris!
 
My neighborhood started a project to clear out the creek of brush, fallen trees & reeds. We had some druggies living there & the kids were afraid to play there after being threatened by a guy with a mohawk & a bicycle chain. We wanted to make the area visible from the trail so the druggies would have to move their camp. Environmentalists & homeless advocates heard the chainsaws & complained to the police, so we had to stop. But the cops were really on our side & told us that if we could clear the creek secretly (without power tools) they would look the other way. So we went at it with hatchets & machetes.

The dang creek was so overgrown that it was awfully close quarters for my machete. Not enough room to swing the thing. I complained to a friend that I needed a "shorter machete" & he suggested a khukri. So I got on line & found this place. Got a 20" AK & was amazed at the chopping power. Got a Bamboo Cutter & cleared the reeds like a maniac. Got a 16" villager BAS for smaller stuff & one of those sickle-things for tall grass. Liked the khuks so much that I got a Pen knife for the work bench & then another one for the glove compartment.

Then I won a Bura Hanshee Kothimoda in a raffle. Next day I won a beautiful 18" Samsher in another raffle. Then... I went insane. Gave up coffee & tobacco to fund my new habit. A 14" Kumar Karda, a Wakizashi, a 16" CAK, A Tibetan short sword, a 12" Sirupati, a Dukti sword, a bowie, a Tibetan Long Sword, a kerambit, an Uddah sword, a cleaver, a Giant Chitlangi Bowie, Ultimate Fighter, Bolo. Sent money to the Nepalese Children's Foundation & convinced others to do the same in lieu of Christmas presents. Lotta dough made its way from my bank account to Nepal since I got that first Khuk....

This area was completely overgrown until it was tamed by wild khukris:
creek.jpg
 
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