Manakamana Special Review
I'm very pleased with my new Manakamana Special from 8/27. It's a
graceful design with many excellent qualities.
Yangdu listed this one as 17.5" length and 28 oz weight. The weight is exactly 28 oz, but the length is a full 18" measured in a straight line from the tip to the center of the handle butt. The bolster and scabbard tip are steel, based on a simple magnet test.
The Manakamana Special is an example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Someone called it a "Sirupati on steroids," and that's pretty close. The knife is comfortable to hold and swing, yet with its full 18" length and substantial belly it
feels like a really big knife. I like it even better than my ASTK and M43 of similar length and weight. Of course each of those blades is beautiful in its own way, and equally functional.
The blade is hollow forged on both sides, not easy to see even up close and certainly not in a photo, but visible when you run a straight-edge along the blade. That will keep it from binding up in wood on deep cuts. Although very shallow, the hollow forge is apparently deliberate since it is fairly uniform and similar on both sides of the blade. I don't know if this is a designated feature of the model or something Rajkumar did as he was working. (Maybe the hammer strokes just naturally create a bit of a hollow, but it's certainly not present on all blades.) The spine is 5/16" thick -- not a lot by HI standards -- but that spine thickness extends most of the length of the spine, finally narrowing to 1/4" until about 1" from the tip, which makes this a very strong blade.
The handle is one of the best I've seen. The satisal wood has a tight grain, hard to see in a photo because of the dark color. It is very well shaped and polished. It looks like dark, reddish brown marble. I've been doing wood polishing for years and have refinished a couple of HI handles, but there's no way I could improve this one. The handle has no rough or protruding edges. The ring is traditional, well done and not so sharp or deep that it hurts the hand. On some other khuks I've had to sand the edge of the ring a little (on the palm side only) to make it comfortable without changing the look. This handle needs none of that. The 4-pin chiruwa style looks great.
The overall workmanship is impeccable, as I've come to expect from Rajkumar kami. Of course the blade is perfectly straight with a clean bevel line and well-executed cho. The Sword of Shiva is simple and sharply cut. All the engraving, including Uncle Bill's initials, is in Devangari and was done after the final polishing, since the letters are a bit raised and rough to the touch. That could be sanded down easily, but I kind of like the raised lettering.
The scabbard is well made but a little loose for the thickness of this blade. It finally catches and feels tight when you push it all the way in to the bolster, but I wouldn't want to ever carry it with the handle horizontal or lower. (Not that I can carry it very far around here, the laws being what they are.
)
There are some small imperfections. The final polishing (to villager satin finish) left a "cloudy area" of scratch marks near the tip on both sides. I might sand that out, or not, as it's minor. The edge is very sharp and cuts paper easily, but the sharpening left a barely visible ribbon of steel along the edge that felt rough to the finger. I'm not experienced at sharpening, but I got almost all of that off in about fifteen minutes with the Chakma, which made the edge even sharper. Not "shaving sharp." You'd have to have a death wish to shave with this knife.
The Karda and Chakma are well done. However, a small, shallow splinter of wood came off the side of the Chakma handle when I first pulled it out of the scabbard. The splinter was about 1/2" long and 1/8" wide. I could have just sanded the shallow depression, but since the splinter was intact I superglued it back in place. Problem solved. I'll sand down the excess superglue when I get around to it.
I apologize for not posting pictures in auch a long review (I'm not set up yet), but Yangdu's original posting has a couple of photos, above. Maybe someone else can add some photos of his MS here.
I don't have much wood that needs cutting, but I couldn't resist taking a few careful swings with this blade at a dried up lemon tree trunk that I uprooted a couple of years ago and never disposed of. The blade bit into the hard wood very nicely each time and after cutting out a small wedge I called it quits. There was not the slightest sign on the edge that it had done any work at all. For any extensive chopping I'll probably turn to my $45 Ugly Villager by Arjun kami -- which, at 16" and 23 oz, continues to be the most
comfortable khukuri that I have, and the one I would least worry about dinging up.
-- Dave
