Blade Length

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Bill_Melater

Joined
Apr 14, 2024
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Can anyone tell me how to measure the blade length for Kailash blades? I understand how HI does it (blade tip to handle tip as the crow flies) and I was wondering if KB is the same?

Sorry if this has already been answered somewhere. I've tried a forum search and tried to find it on the website but I can't find anything explicit.
 
Hey there Bill! For us blade length is measured as a straight line from tip to the centre of thefront face of bolster/guard. Handle length is measured from this same central bolster point to the centre of the rearmost projection of the handle (for modern knives) and the centre of the widest part of the pommel flare (for traditional blades). We don't provide an OAL or overall length dimension (HI calls this blade length) but the number is typically the blade length plus handle length for straight blades, BL+HL minus 0.25-0.5" for most khukuris and BL+HL minus 0.75" for blades like the salyani which are strongly curved.
Take care,
Andrew and the team at Kailash
 
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Thank you for the detailed response!

On the topic of handle length, I've always wondered how you determine what a good fit in the hand is like. I have seen the handle measuring guide on the website and my hand measures pretty much the same as the image so a Medium looks like a good fit but I'm unsure if I shouldn't ignore the large. Should a Khukuri have a single solid hand placement or do you want to be able to slide the handle down and/or choke up near the bolster?
 
Hey there Bill-
In general traditional khukuri handles should be optimised for a single, optimal grip of two fingers below the handle ring and two above it. However there are some historical examples that buck this trend and also photographs of gurkhas using a variety of different grips including a 3 in front grip. This is an area I would like to learn more about also.
The main issue with upsizing a handle is the handle ring- it slides between the fingers so only allows one finger of adjustment at a time. If the handle ring was always located a fixed distance between the pommel then you could go ahead and add a finger width to enable a more forward grip while retainign an optimised rear grip. However the handle ring moves to ensure that large hands get the a good ring-flare distance as handle sizes increase. This means you are compromising retention in a big way by pushing the pommel flare back and away from where your palm wants it to be. This is true up until you can get a 3 finger grip behind the handle ring- at which point the handle is really quite big. Your central 2/2 grip in this case is also very unoptimised for retention and is like holding onto a barrel with a ring in the centre. This can put a lot of pressure between the ring and middle fingers.
 
I had wondered about the historical examples with the handle ring ~70% down from the bolster (such as this one) - something you also see on even quite short handles like the mk1.
 
HJA said:
I had wondered about the historical examples with the handle ring ~70% down from the bolster (such as this one) - something you also see on even quite short handles like the mk1.
Click to expand...
It's a confusing thing and I don't have any answers for you. Here's some thoughts though.

With that layout It's quite hard to imagine that such a handle would be designed with a 2 and 2 grip in mind and not a 3 and 1 but that is what the khukuri orthodoxy suggests.
If it were a 2 and 2 grip then it suggests that the hand is actually quite small indeed. There is a lot of "dead space" at the front of the blade which the hand cannot reach in this grip and may in fact be too wide a diameter to be gripped properly. Some benefits to this would be that it would help stop the hand from sliding up on the blade. It would also create a more aggressively forward biased balance than modern khukuri users are used to, essentually creating another inch or so of "virtual blade length" that is very lightweight. The very thick spine at the base of the blade would add more power in this grip than a more natural forwards grip where it is closer to the hand and provides a tamer feeling.

This specific example has handle rings that are not dissimilar to older hanshee style blades. We've made some handle rings like this and they are very large and aggressive- slipping them between your fingers is not an appealing concept. In my hands they felt better against the back of my hand as you would a regular pommel flare. This could suggest that the entire palm was actually intended to be located in front of such a handle ring, with the rear potion more being for an off hand to interact with as support. This looks to be the case with the longer salyani style handles- potentially this is an example of a transitional handle style that is more one handed but still retains some features designed for off hand support.

I'd like to reach out to some experts about this in the future as I feel it's an area that could help expand our understanding of past blades and our viewpoints on modern blades in equal measure.

Take care,
Andrew and the team at Kailash
 
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