Hand-Forged Axe and Karambit Set, Ring Pommel

Two pieces, each with its own leather sheath. The large one is a full-tang chopper in an axe silhouette: a broad deep-bellied blade with a hammer-dimpled flat and a polished bevel, on a long rosewood handle finishing in a steel ring pommel. The small one is a karambit — a curved claw blade with twin holes through it, rosewood scales and a steel finger ring at the butt.

They share their materials rather than their job. The chopper is a two-handed tool for cutting through things; the karambit is a small close-work blade. Anyone telling you a set like this is a coordinated fighting system is selling you a story. What it genuinely is, is two well-made blades that look like they belong together, which is a perfectly good reason to buy a pair.

Not in the strict sense, and the distinction is worth having because it is in your favour. A real axe is a head with an eye through it, wedged onto a separate haft. This is one continuous piece of steel: the blade and the tang are the same bar, and the rosewood is pinned on either side of it.

That removes the classic axe failure outright. Heads come loose because the haft dries, shrinks and works in the eye under repeated shock, and a loose head is both useless and dangerous. A full-tang chopper cannot do that. What you give up is the ability to re-haft it if the handle is ever damaged — on an axe you fit a new haft, on this you send it back to us — and a solid tang transmits more shock into your hands than a timber haft does. For most owners that is a good trade.

Looks, and we would rather say that than repeat the usual claim. Dimpled and scalloped flats get sold on the idea that they reduce friction and stop the blade sticking in what it cuts. On a thin kitchen knife going through something wet and dense there is a small real effect. On a heavy chopper swung through wood or bone there is effectively none — the blade is through and out before suction has a chance to matter.

So it is decoration, and it is handsome decoration: hundreds of overlapping hammer marks over the upper flat, with a clean polished bevel below them. The one thing worth knowing is that a dimpled surface has considerably more area than a flat one and every dimple is a place for moisture to sit, so it wants oiling more thoroughly than a plain blade. A plain flat is available at no extra cost if you would rather.

A karambit is a small curved utility and close-work knife with a finger ring at the butt, from the Malay and Indonesian tradition, where it started as an agricultural blade before it became a fighting one. The ring lets you retain it in a way a straight handle cannot, and the curve means the point is always oriented for a pulling cut.

It does not pair with the chopper functionally — they do unrelated things. The pairing is aesthetic: same rosewood, same steel, matched leatherwork. Worth knowing before you order: karambits and ring-handled knives are specifically restricted in some jurisdictions in a way that a chopper is not, so if you are importing into somewhere with strict knife law, check the karambit separately rather than assuming the set travels as one thing.

1,590 grams, and the complete set with both sheaths comes to 2,300. For once this is a weight we can report without a caveat: a two-handed chopping tool 31 inches long sits comfortably in the band a felling axe of the same length occupies, roughly 1,400 to 1,800 grams. It is not overweight for what it is.

The blade itself is thick, though. Work back from the total and the head carries something in the region of 80 to 95 grams for every inch of its 12 inch length, which is above what we put into a heavy kukri. That is deliberate on a chopping tool and it is where the authority comes from. Note also that grams per inch of BLADE is a useless figure on anything with a long handle — the handle carries a large share of the mass, and the honest number is the one measured over the whole length.

The standard build gives the chopper a 12 inch blade on a 19 inch handle, 31 inches overall. That is a default rather than a fixed specification — everything we make is forged after the order, so the dimensions are yours to set.

The handle length is the change worth thinking about. Nineteen inches makes this a genuinely two-handed tool with real tip speed behind the cut. Shorter — 12 to 14 inches — turns it into a big one-handed chopper you can work with for longer without fatigue, which suits a lot of buyers better. Tell us what you want to do with it and we will tell you what we would build.

Rosewood as standard on both pieces, pinned through the tang, with the chopper's handle carved in a segmented pattern for grip and finishing in a steel ring pommel. Rosewood is our default across the range: dense, hard, dimensionally stable and about as handsome as timber gets.

There are other options at no extra cost — horn, bone, micarta, and leather over timber for a warmer and grippier hold. On a chopping tool specifically, micarta is worth considering: it is completely indifferent to damp and it grips better wet than dry, which timber does not. Whatever you choose, both pieces are made to match.

Yes, both of them, sharpened and ready to use unless you tell us otherwise. On the chopper the edge is finished along the polished bevel below the dimpling; on the karambit it runs the full inside of the curve.

Unsharpened builds are free, for display or for an awkward import. So is a stage combat build — rebated edge, rounded tip — though on a 1,590 gram chopper a rebated edge does not make the weight any safer.

5160 high-carbon spring steel for both pieces, which we use across the whole range. Each blade is forged to shape, quenched, and then tempered back by hand as a separate operation afterwards. Those two steps are distinct and the second is what matters, and on a chopping tool it matters more than on almost anything else: a chopper takes repeated shock loads, and an untempered blade chips its edge or cracks rather than absorbing them.

5160 is not stainless and is not meant to be. It rusts if left damp — and see the note about the dimpling, which gives it more places to do so — and in exchange it takes and keeps an edge far better than any stainless we could sensibly forge. We do not make pattern-welded or laminated blades at all, by choice.

Well forward of the hand, which is correct for the job. The head is heavy and the handle is comparatively light, so the mass arrives where the edge does. The steel ring pommel at the butt claws a little of it back.

We do not publish a single point-of-balance figure, because hand-forged work varies and a number two inches out is worse than none. Ask before dispatch and we will measure the actual piece we are sending you, from the front of the handle, and send you the figure.

Two, both in black leather. The chopper's is shaped to its broad blade with a riveted belt arrangement and brass studs; the karambit has its own small sheath with a stud closure, cut to the curve of the claw.

The chopper's sheath is built to that outline rather than made to a pattern, which matters on a blade this broad — a generic sheath will not take it. Colours and carry arrangements are yours to specify, and if you want a single rig that carries both pieces together rather than two separate sheaths, that is a custom forge item and we will quote it.

Nothing is held in stock. Both pieces are forged after the order arrives, which is why the dimensions, the handle material, the finish and the edge specification are all free to change. Standard builds dispatch in 2 to 3 business days; genuinely custom work runs 4 to 6 weeks depending on the queue.

The set ships with both pieces sheathed and braced in a rigid carton, by DHL or FedEx with tracking, typically 7 to 14 business days from Kathmandu. Import duty and local taxes are the buyer's responsibility and vary by country, and please read the note in FAQ 4 about the karambit specifically.