Who made the first kukri machete?

H

Hans Asmussen

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Nov 19, 2012
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The question might be asked on two levels: 1. who applied the kukri design to something that can be used as a machete and 2. who actually labelled his design as a kukri machete. Question 1 can likely be traced back to antiquity.

So, I guess it is number 2: who was the first one to call his design a kukri machete?
 
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Hans - Historical accounts point to the kukri as being originally used by the Ghurkas. The more curved design that is applied today seems to have come from changes made in the Nepalese mountains and put to use in farming scenarios as well as in battles. I don't think there has been a determination or ultimate conclusion as to the original designer (a person) of the kukri. Some think that the blade shape was derived from an ancient Greek Sword, some lean towards Macedonian influences. IMHO I would hedge my bets on the Macedonian connection.
 
Thanks for the answer. I think most knife forms have been invented many times at many different places. But that was not my question. Maybe it helps when I rephrase it.

Several companies label their products "kukri machetes". These are knives reminding us of the traditional kukri form, but with far thinner blades. Who has invented this label and why?
 
theres no standard blade thickness for a kukri, the machetes just happen to be thinner. Machete is a spanish word, so most likely this didnt happen until later in history. As to why, it gives companies an opportunity to sell a kukri at a more easily marketable cost. Nobody 'invented' that label, its just calling it what it is.
 
There are several fallacies here. Even if there is no standard by a governing body, most people would regard khukuris with a thin and flat blade as outliers and unsual at least. Further, even if calling a kukri machete a "kukri machete" were calling it what it is, there must have been someone who did so the first time.
 
In terms of machetes with the profile of a kukri, I believe that Lasher Tools of South Africa was producing them before Cold Steel started importing them (the original line of CS machetes were just standard production Lashers with CS stickers thrown on.) I could be totally wrong, though.
 
Hi Hans,

There's a Khukuri and there's a machete but we first heard it from Cold Steel. Now if you look at the profile of itself, it suggests a a hybrid from Kopis, Machaira and Falcata.
kukri1.jpg

therionarms_c1180_FalcataCollection.jpg

If you remove the finger guard/curved pommel it looks like a falcata.

tumblr_m5t6m0Wkk61rrjmgoo1_1280.jpg

In a way, a Khukuri machete is a KLO, Khukuri-Looking Object from a purist's stand point.
 
Hans Asmussen said:
There are several fallacies here. Even if there is no standard by a governing body, most people would regard khukuris with a thin and flat blade as outliers and unsual at least. Further, even if calling a kukri machete a "kukri machete" were calling it what it is, there must have been someone who did so the first time.
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who cares who did it first? wouldnt it be a more interesting to know who first produced a thin bladed flat ground kurki shaped knife? probably someone trying to make a kurkri who didnt quite have enough metal. it has the properties of a machete and a kurki... by rigorous testing and through analysis we were able to give it the name 'kukri machete'. truly revolutionary.
 
JayGoliath said:
Hi Hans,

There's a Khukuri and there's a machete but we first heard it from Cold Steel. Now if you look at the profile of itself, it suggests a a hybrid from Kopis,
Click to expand...

See my post--I'm pretty sure that Lasher was making that very same machete prior to CS importing and popularizing it.
 
JayGoliath said:
Hi Hans,

There's a Khukuri and there's a machete but we first heard it from Cold Steel. Now if you look at the profile of itself, it suggests a a hybrid from Kopis, Machaira and Falcata.
Click to expand...

Way before the Kopis, there was the Egyptian Kopesh bronze sword. These were in use in 3000BC.

Egyptian-swords.jpg



In a way, a Khukuri machete is a KLO, Khukuri-Looking Object from a purist's stand point.
Click to expand...

Agreed. KLOs, all of them.
 
The thing of it is, the early Khukuris were not the thick chopping beasts we think of today...popularized by the current Nepalese makers. Today's Khukuri, while following the traditional pattern in many ways, is much thicker and is marketed to the bushcraft crowd, many of who prefer to chop with knives rather than axes. The Khukuris of the 19th century and the First World War were not nearly so thick. It was an all purpose camp knife optimized to be also used as a hand to hand weapon buy trained soldiers...the Ghurkas. Soldiers do a lot of things but they don't chop a lot of wood. So one might argue that the Khukuri machete is simple a variation on 19th century Khukuris...light, fast, and a whole lot thinner than you're going to get out of Nepal today. I have a Condor Khukuri machete coming to me for the very reason that I want something akin to the WWI and earlier Khukuri...not because I want a machete shaped like a Khukuri...it has a Cho and everything. I have two excellent Central American style (maybe manufactured) machetes...a 22" and a 24" Collins Legitimus for all my machete needs.
 
Hans Asmussen said:
There are several fallacies here. Even if there is no standard by a governing body, most people would regard khukuris with a thin and flat blade as outliers and unsual at least. Further, even if calling a kukri machete a "kukri machete" were calling it what it is, there must have been someone who did so the first time.
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I think FortyTwoBlades has answered the question, but I'd like to add that the word "kukri" is a mispronunciation of khukuri which seems to derive from Sanskrit "kshura - kshura" which translates to "sharp blade - sharp blade" (did someone stutter?) which is really just onomatopoeia for the sound produced by swinging it through the air! So a kukri has to be a sharp tool long enough to make that sound when used ;)
I wonder who in Nepal (or where-ever) established "khukuri" as the term for a tool of the shape we are familiar with... but the East Nepal versions are called "Siru-pate" to associate their thinner blade-shapes with the Siru plant's leaf-blades that they resemble.
In contrast, the word "machete" is the Spanish diminutive of "macho" = masculine, strong, etc., so "machete" = little man. This is comparable to the term used in other parts of the world for the same type of tool, derives from Latin, "cutlass" = little knife. Given the size of these tools, why would either be referred to as "little"? Well, because the comparison is to longer & heavier cutting tools, swords! In effect, "machete" = "short, light-weight sword".
As it turns out, BOTH tools evolved from the short swords of ancient times (e.g. kopis as mentioned above). It is fascinating to me that the machete has seen such expansive evolution into various shapes to suit various locations, e.g. panga that evolved in Africa and bolo in the Philippines (see similarities of the latter to the khukuri), and we consider these to be types of machetes... but NOT as types of khukuris.

There is no specified thickness of a machete, there is no specified thickness for a khukuri, so why is a "khukuri machete" considered to be a khukuri-shaped machete?
My theory - the influence of Spanish expansion and trade did not affect India to the same extent as it did other places, indeed it wasn't until the end of the 15th century AD that direct trade links between the West and India were re-established after the Roman collapse! So while the "machete" (or some form of it) had been carried and developed by various peoples all over the West for a millenium, the oldest known Nepalese khukuri dates from AFTER the re-establishment of trade with the West. Why oh why are there no earlier Nepalese examples? The reason that the kukri-machete is a machete and not a khukuri is because the machete is a more well established tool in the known world, its features more recognizable despite its various forms, whereas the traditional khukuri has not been known to the world for nearly as long and has not evolved into as many forms that differ substantially from the traditional form constructed thicker (and so heavier) than the best known forms of the machete. For how long have the people of Nepal known how to construct such a long & thin yet durable cutting tool? Would they have done so already had the exchange of ideas been more prevalent throughout history? If they had done so, my guess is that we STILL would call these "kukri-machetes" just as we use the terms "bolo-machete" and "panga-machete" to describe different blade styles.


So to my mind, these machetes are effectively thin, non-traditional khukuris. And I bet you can find machetes in Nepal today ;)
 
I think that traditional kukris exist as a distinct class of their own under the "ethnic chopping tools" category rather than being under the true machete category--just like parangs/goloks do. They're sort of related to machetes, but distantly. Kukris, in terms of their intended use, construction, etc, strike me as being an intermediary between machetes and billhooks. :)
 
the vintage blackjack knives marauder would be one of my earliest recollections of a modern day production which fits the kukri like machete style

http://blackjack.0catch.com/pages/marauder.htm

really no idea who was the person responsible for the coined term "kukri machete"
it could have been fairly recent...
imo, it sounds far better than the generic dog legged bolo?
 
Just for reference, here's a picture of a Lasher-branded kukri machete.

get_image.php
 
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to answering my question.

The picture for me is now as follows: while yatagan/kukri influenced designs existed earlier, Lasher had one that stuck, and Cold Steel chose the label of "kukri machete" for it. Other jumped the bandwagon, sometimes calling their versions kukri machete or just kukri.
 
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Cold Steel didn't give it its name--Lasher already referred to it as a kukri machete. CS just kept the name when they began importing them, and they popularized the concept of the kukri-shaped machete outside of South Africa where Lasher is based. :)
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Cold Steel didn't give it its name--Lasher already referred to it as a kukri machete. CS just kept the name when they began importing them, and they popularized the concept of the kukri-shaped machete outside of South Africa where Lasher is based. :)
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Oh, thank you. I see my question answered then.
 
In Nepal and northern India one finds a range of edged tools - the aansi can be thin like a sickle and used for cutting rice, or thicker like a billhook and used for cutting green wood. With the scarcity of iron and steel most early tools from any continent have thin blades, even axes. Only when the materials became more readily available, did thicker blades evolve.... European billhooks can be found with concave, straight or convex, so there is no reason why Nepalese tools did (do) not have a similar range of regional blade profiles. The people of many primitive societies, even those in Europe, often could not afford the range of tools we have today.

A chopping tool had to be multi-purpose: a meat cleaver, a firewood chopper, even a weapon. It is likely the khukuri was just another regional variation of a billhook type tool, that became the tool of choice when the Gurkhas entered service in the British Army. Its form then became standardised, and made by UK cutlers and edge tool makers on an industrial scale, as well as being made by Nepalese smiths...

The machete appears to have derived from the naval cutlass, popular in all the navies of the maritime powers of the past: Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and Holland. The Spanish were probably one of the first to develop it as a trade item, hence its name, but the slave and sugar trade required both a barter item and a tool for cutting jungle and harvesting sugarcane, and it was soon produced in vast numbers in the Midlands of England...

Khukuri shaped machetes do seem to be a modern invention, or more likely just another phase in the development of edge tools.... How many shapes do we really need??? Talabot, a French firm of edge tool makers (taillandiers) boasted in their 1935 catalogue that as well as the 250 shapes of billhook illustrated, they held the patterns for over 3000 others, and would make any other shape upon receipt of a template or pattern.... It seems that with the demise of the humble billhook, the utility (survival or outdoor) knife and the machete are now the tools 'de rigueur' to re-design/modernise/bas***dise/change.....
 
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Welcome back, Billman!It's been a while! Always love your posts. I hope we start seeing a revival of the billhook alongside the upswing in the popularity of machetes. They're not so common over here.
 
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