Wandered back along memory lane to March of 2002. Found a familiar thread, this from Cliff Stamp to me on testing out my first (non HI) khukri, @13 inches) Painstakingly meticulous. Thanks again, Cliff.
Kismet :
What light duty tests would you like me to try? This will probably be a back-pack tool, replacing a hatchet.
Some pretty standard wood work would be my first series of testing. Fell a few soft-medium small trees (4" and under), limb them out and buck them up into 1' long sections. Here you are looking for (a) raw penetration, (b) low wedging, (c) accuracy and precision, (d) grip comfort and security and (e) edge durability and retention. This work should not have significantly blunted the edge nor damaged your hand.
Next is where you raise the stakes quite a bit more and use the khukuri to split the wood. Since the wood is quite small, you should be able to do this without any difficulty just by chopping into the ends of the wood. Since they are uneven from the bucking you might need to trim one edge off with a saw, or just clip a bit with the blade. You are again looking for the same aspects as in the above. Here it is quite possible to see much more dulling because you are chopping right into knots on occasion, but you should not see visible deformation.
Now you sharpen the blade. It should rise back up to a fine shaving finish quite quickly, being a carbon steel, either plain or spring most likely. Depending on what manner of hones and finishing equipment you use this should only take 5-10 minutes. If it is longer then the blade was blunted too much, or suffered too much damage. This assumes of course you are freehanding, with clamps and such it might take much longer so use your experience to judge.
Next I would look at fine cutting ability, wood whitling, rope cutting, that kind of thing. Carve a few points on some of the wood you cut and, and put some handles on some of the other pieces, try using it as a draw knife. Try some push cuts through rope as well as slices. Try it out on some fabrics and other materials. To enhance the slicing performance you might want to leave the edge near the handle at a rougher finish (lower grit), and put a high polish around the sweet spot up out on the blade for chopping.
Lastly I would find a decently large piece of wood, at least 8-10" or better (20" or better if you are related to Will Kwan) and chop through it. This is going to take some time and induce a decent amount of fatigue and sweat. This will let you look at extended use handle characteristics as well as the edge durability when your technique starts to get sloppy.
Other non-cutting testing would include hammering with the spine, point work, for example breaking up a stump to get dry wood for tinder, or heavy prying (lots of uses), and root and bone chopping. Some of these will induce damage no matter what the knife, root chopping for example can induce rock contacts, and all can cause damage if taken to the extreme. In order to interpret the results you need to have some experience with other knives in order to know what is good and what is poor performance.
The above is a decent place to start and is roughly how I first take look at large wood working blade. There is lots more you can do obviously, you are only limited by your imagination. A khukuri is a very useful all around tool and there are quite a few ways that it can be used by creative people. Check some older posts for lots of details.
Cliff
