Khukuri storage options

[Dirtbiker]

OK, now I'm fully addicted with 8 HI kuks and one Tarwar. When I receive each one I give them a cleaning and a coat of metal safe spray wax to protect them. Currently they are residing in a drawer, in their sheaths. However anything over 19" won't fit.

How do you all protect your HI treasures and what in your opinion is the best way to store them?

 

[Anttheknee]

Not sure, but for lack of a better way, I would lightly coat the inside of a vacuum pack plastic bag (Think coating a frying pan with pam only lighter) with a very nuetral P.H. anti corrosive oil and vacuum seal it without the sheath. store the sheath seperately wrapped in white cotton in a stable room temp dry place in your house.

 

[mPisi]

I use a laundry basket with a blanket. Put a layer of blanket, then a layer of khuks,reverse the blanket on top of them, a layer of khuks, etc. Depending on the basket that will cover everything up to about 24" or so. Personally I leave them in the sheaths, but I am in a fairly low-humidity environment so YMMV. Lightly oiled each time I mess around with one. The basket gets heavy but it easy to move around, or put on the top shelf of a closet etc.

 

[Anttheknee]

It depends on how long you are talking about storing them I guess. For the long run, as something you plan on putting in a time capsule for a few decades and giving to a grandchild then you are going to want to have the least exposure as possible to the elements. preferably zero air cirulation and zero humidity.

 

[shortwinger]

Many people send their favorite blades to me for storage. You can email me privately for the shipping address...

 

[OldeWolf]

Best storage place is to sleep with it, take it to the bathroom, shower with it, go to movies with it, carry it like it has a symbiotic relationship with you.

 

[Issun]

I display mine in a wooden rack that I made
no reason to hide something

though if the question is for long term storage, Id think that the military method of smearing them with cosmoline and sealing them in a container would work well... at least for the blades, not so sure for the sheaths

 

[Dirtbiker]

I'm not talking about long term but where do you guys keep them. They take up a lot of space.

 

[abdelhazred]

I'm not talking about long term but where do you guys keep them. They take up a lot of space.

On my coffee table and in my work bag.

Nice rack Issun. Yeah put those knives up, steel is man's best friend.

 

[Howard Wallace]

Try under the bed.

 

[Nils Georg]

I really liked that rack, Issun, gave me ideas Thanks!

 

[Svashtar]

Here are a few ideas; general storage mostly for smaller knives is in a poplar dowel rack I built and hang next to a display cabinet. Most of the knives are out of the sheaths and the edges face the wall. The dowels are about 1.25" diameter and 12" long. You can store a lot of stuff in this manner.

The second set of pics are of a display case I picked up and slightly modified; I made long ledger strips out of red oak, stained them to match the cabinet (as close as I could get) and laid them along the front of the glass shelves for the brass chapes to butt up against. This keeps the knives upright.

I'm sorry for the poor glary pics; these were just taken quickly this morning and there was too much reflection from the window.

Norm

 

[Svashtar]

Everything is in a small den, so I just went in a circle around the room and took pics. This first one is inside the closet on wire racks built into the upper portion of the closet. This is the middle part of the closet; there's more stuff off to the right that I didn't get pictures of.

I have a little side table and keep a display Hanshee there, and some Bonecutters. That's a carved chandan YCS in front.

The old gun cabinet is full of longer knives now; I modified the base a bit so that I can basically lay them in back to front. Again, apologies for the glare.

Jerry Mings built a tachi stand to mount my EDC Khukuri on, a 50" 154 oz. Buffalo Head Ceremonial from NKH.

Last is a picture of a wall rack I built to hold some modified Assegai (Ikthwa) spears and a Samburu spear; those are Kami medallions hanging from the rack, over a bookcase with assorted misc. knife stuff on it.

 

[Svashtar]

Again, just swinging the camera around the room.

Top of the gun cabinet is where the last of BGRS's reside (under KH shipping paper to keep the dust off a bit)

The next set of 3 pics is really what I recommend and the most effective storage; Steve Ferguson is the one that came up with the idea, so I copied him. This is a rack with 3/4" dowels (again, poplar works great) each about 3.5" long set 3.25" apart center to center. I built it in two racks, so the end dowels on each rack are 7" apart, allowing you to double up in the middle. Also you can add longer / wider knives to the ends. Depending on the frog and the style / width of the knife, you can turn the knives either way to get them to hang better together, or to share pegs. You can hang a lot of knives in a very short space.

Each dowel was set into a hole drilled with a flat bottomed Forstner bit into red oak, and secured with both gorilla glue and a screw from the backside, and is strong enough to support two knives if needed. Knives are slipped onto the dowels over the frog / belt loops.

Each one of these racks is 4" long with an OAL of 8.5' end to end.

Final pic is just to complete the circuit around the room, showing the top of the first cabinet. There are actually a few Villagers on top of that, but they are down out of sight. A friend on the team of Indian software developers I worked with brought me back the wall hanging as a gift from Bangalore a few years ago.

Believe it or not, in 2006 there were probably 60 more HI knives than this, but they were all back in the wire racks in the closet, and the bookshelf had no room for books! No one needs to tell me about HIKV as I'm pretty much the poster child, or was until a few years ago.

This is slowly getting whittled down over time to a much smaller core group of nice users, and that's all good.


Norm

 

[stickfred]

Looks good Norm. That's quite a collection that you've built up and it looks like they're being well cared for. I haven't heard of a 50", nearly 10 pound khuk before-that's just gonna rile up all the zombie killers on the Forum.

Edit: No sooner do I post and I see that you've got another set of photos up. Thanks for sharing all your(and Steve's) storage solutions. Man, you have a lot of khukuris.

 

[Svashtar]

To answer the last question from Dirtbiker: I use Ballistol on everything. Yvsa was the one that told us about it, and that protects the metal, beautifies and protects the scabbards and wood handles, and acts as a moisturizer for the horn or antler.

Twice a year I coat the blades with Rust Free from AG Russell, which is the best stuff, and a little bottle lasts forever. Villager / Satin knives are much more rust resistant than full polish knives, so I keep a careful watch on the full polish blades.

The other thing to do is to close the heater vent in the den where these knives hang. They're up above the closet so already 7' up the wall, and the hot air dries out the horn handles and shrinks them especially. This is where the Ballistol helps, and I get it in both spray for quick application to the scabbards and liquid so it can be heavily applied to handles, especially horn.

Another great handle treatment for naturals (horn, antler, stag, ramshorn, impala, ivory etc., etc.) is plain old baby oil / mineral oil. It replenishes the oils in the material and stops them from shrinking or getting brittle.

Norm

 

[leebrewer]

L I B, I got the same one as one that you got. Crazy, huh? I agree with the Ballistol and Mineral oil for everything. And the few I got that aint gonna get touched, the ones you can only look at, those I Ren Wax.

 

[Dirtbiker]

Wow, Norm... that's one heck of a collection. I know mine will never get that big. Thanks for the preservation tips.

 

[Nils Georg]

WOW!! Svashtar that's what I call a Khukuri collection!! How many years have you been collecting? And to think you used to have 60 more....... Jeebes, I could have spent weeks in that room

 

[Svashtar]

Nils, practically every piece was acquired between January 2004 and April 2006, just 28 months. The DOTD was a daily ritual. (I wrote my "I'll take it" email to Uncle Bill or Yangdu as soon as I came in every morning and had it ready to go.) There weren't always DOTD on weekends, but sometimes there were, which meant I was online for 2-3 hours each weekend day just in case.

My Bladeforums avatar is tatooed on my left shoulder.

If it weren't for fate intervening (to save me) I'd be living under a bridge hoarding 47 shopping carts of rusting HI knives eating roadkill burgers and HI would be a member of the Fortune 500.

(HIKV is real, and it reached a perfect storm in my situation. I can honestly say in retrospect that I was completely irresponsible about it. There is a fine line between normal behavior and obsession, and I'm embarrassed to say that I pretty much obliterated it. )

Any knives aquired after that date were mostly specialty items I sold others to snag, like the Museum Model and the HI Crescent Moon Sirupate, or one offs bought or traded for from other forumites.

Best,

Norm