Hand-Forged Chainpure Kukri Knife, White Metal Fittings

Chainpure is the kukri pattern named after Chainpur, a town in Sankhuwasabha district in the eastern hills of Nepal. What distinguishes it is not a fighting characteristic but the standard of finish: Chainpur built a reputation for careful work, so the blades from there tend to have cleaner lines, more attention in the handle, and fittings that are decorated rather than merely functional. Inlaid handles, ringed grips and cast or worked metal fittings are all part of that tradition. It is a kukri made to be a good-looking object as well as a working one, which is a different intention from a pattern like the Bhojpure, where the point is the mass in the belly.

In Nepal a kukri is a household tool first, and most of them look like it — plain wooden handles, no inlay, a scabbard that does its job and nothing more. But kukris have always also been carried as status objects, given as gifts, presented on occasions and worn where they would be seen, and those get made differently: better finish, decorated handles, worked metal fittings, sometimes engraving on the blade. That is the dress kukri. The distinction is not about quality of steel or heat treatment, and a dress kukri is not a display piece in the sense of being non-functional — a good one is a working blade that happens to be finely made. It is about where the maker's time went. This Chainpure sits on the decorated side; our Bhojpure and bushcraft patterns sit on the plain working side, and both are honest ways to make a kukri.

White metal is the term used across Nepali and Indian metalwork for the silver-coloured alloys used in fittings — generally a nickel-based alloy such as nickel silver, sometimes called German silver, which contains no actual silver. It is used because it takes fine detail well, resists tarnish better than brass, and gives a cool silver tone against the warm colours of bone, horn and rosewood. Brass is the yellow alternative and is more common on plainer kukris. On this knife you get both: white metal for the ferrule and butt cap at the hilt, and a cast brass chape at the tip of the dap. The two-tone effect is deliberate. Practically, white metal dulls with handling like any metal and comes back with a soft cloth, and it wants no oil at all — that is only for the blade.

Different districts, different intentions. The Bhojpure is the broad, heavy-bellied chopping pattern from Bhojpur, built as an angkhola with a thick hollowed spine and two fullers, fitted in brass with a bone and horn handle. This Chainpure is the finely finished pattern from Chainpur: a single fuller rather than two, an inlaid bone and rosewood handle with white metal fittings, and a shorter 13-inch blade. Both ship as complete traditional sets with karda, chakmak and a decorated dap, and both are forged from the same steel by the same smiths. Buy the Bhojpure if you want the harder-hitting blade; buy this one if you want the better-dressed one.

Chirra is the Nepali word for a fuller ground into a kukri blade, and smiths count them: ek chirra is one, dui chirra two, tin chirra three. This blade is an ek chirra. The practical difference between one and two is weight and stiffness. Each fuller removes metal from the flat of the blade, so more fullers means a lighter blade for the same outline — but each one also takes a little stiffness out, and there is a point where you have removed more than the blade can spare. A single fuller is the common choice on a well-balanced working blade: enough weight saved to matter, nothing given up. Two or three appear on heavier builds where there is more steel to spare, or where the maker wants the visual effect. Both are traditional and neither is better.

They are decorative inlay set into the bone sections of the grip — small pins or dots of contrasting material let into drilled holes and finished flush with the surface. It is a traditional Nepali handle decoration and it is one of the details that marks a kukri as coming from the more finely finished end of the tradition, which is exactly what the Chainpure name implies. Because each dot is placed and finished by hand, their spacing and colour vary slightly between pieces. They are set flush, so they do not affect grip and they will not catch on anything.

Yes, and it is worth saying because decorated kukris are often assumed to be display pieces. It is hand-forged from 5160 high-carbon spring steel, oil-tempered, sharpened, and built on a full tang. The decoration is in the fittings and the handle, not in the blade — the blade is the same steel, the same heat treatment and the same edge as our plainest working kukri. It will chop green wood and clear brush. Do not use it on stone, metal, nails hidden in old timber, or seasoned hardwood knots.

The blade is forged from 5160 high-carbon spring steel, the same alloy used in heavy-duty truck leaf springs, prized for toughness and edge retention. It is oil-tempered for a hard cutting edge backed by a flexible, shock-absorbent spine. Nepali smiths have forged kukris from vehicle leaf spring for generations, long before anyone in Nepal was quoting an alloy number — it became the traditional material because it was available and because a chopping blade needs to absorb shock without chipping far more than it needs extreme hardness.

Full tang, with sections of bone and rosewood jointed together over it, turned and shaped as one piece, with rings cut into the profile and the inlay set into the bone. A white metal ferrule closes the front where the handle meets the blade and a white metal cap finishes the butt. The rings are not purely decorative — they give the hand something to register against, which matters on a kukri because the forward bend puts a twisting load on the grip with every strike. Because bone and rosewood are natural materials, no two handles are identical in colour or grain.

Yes, both, carried in pockets on the back of the dap. The karda is the small sharpened utility knife for the fine work a big blade cannot do; the chakmak is the blunt burnisher used to true and realign the edge in the field without removing metal. A traditional kukri is not considered complete without them, and they are included here with handles matched to the kukri rather than as an afterthought.

It arrives sharpened to a working edge along the belly, finished by hand, and the karda is sharpened too; the chakmak is blunt by design. The area near the cho is traditionally left unsharpened, which is normal. Choose the display-blunt option if you need it unsharpened for display or import rules, at no extra charge. As for patterns — yes, we build the Bhojpure for chopping weight, the sirupate for a slender quicker blade, and fuller counts from none through tin chirra. Tell us what you want the knife to do and we will say honestly which pattern suits it.

Yes. We ship worldwide from Nepal by DHL or FedEx in 7 to 14 business days with tracking. In-stock specs dispatch within 2 to 3 business days; fully custom builds take roughly 4 to 6 weeks to forge first. Import and blade laws vary by country, so please check your local rules before ordering.