Hand-Forged Double Ring Karambit

A karambit is a knife with the edge ground along the inner face of a curved blade and a ring at the handle for a finger to pass through. It descends from an agricultural tool used across Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and its name in Indonesian points at the same idea our word "claw" does. A double ring karambit adds a second ring, so a finger of each hand position is anchored rather than just one. On this piece the forward ring is cut through a widened plate at the base of the blade and the rear ring is forged into the butt of the tang.

Held blade-forward, the index finger goes through the forward ring at the ricasso and the little finger through the rear ring at the butt, with the carved grip filling the palm between them. What that changes is straightforward: a single-ring karambit pivots around one point, so the knife can rotate in the hand and be spun, re-indexed or reversed. Two rings remove that entirely. The knife becomes a fixed extension of the hand in one orientation, which is why retention is so much better and why it is the wrong tool for anything that needs a grip change. It is worth being blunt about the cost: you cannot let go of this knife quickly. Freeing your hand takes a deliberate movement, and if you drop something else while holding it you cannot simply open your fingers to catch it.

It sits at the ricasso, the short unsharpened section between the edge and the handle, because that is the only part of a blade a finger can pass through without sitting next to a cutting edge. The steel is widened into a plate there to give the ring a rim of material all the way round. Two things tell you whether it was made properly. First, the inside wall of the ring should be smooth, rounded over on both faces and polished, not left as a drilled or ground hole with a square edge, because a finger bears its whole weight on that rim. Second, look for bright bare metal, burring or discoloured rings around the opening, which would mean the hole was cut after heat treatment rather than before it. On the question of whether cutwork weakens a blade, our deep-fullered kukri page works through the structural argument properly rather than repeating a summary of it here.

Because a hawkbill is a hook, and the whole edge lies along the inside of the curve, so the tip finishes pointing back toward the hand that holds it. Everything this blade does is therefore a pull. You place the hook over or behind what you want to cut and draw it toward you, and the material is trapped in the curve and fed into the belly of the edge instead of skidding off the way it does on a straight blade. That is why the shape survives in pruning hooks, linoleum knives, sickles and rope knives. It also explains the limits: a hook cannot be pushed, cannot be laid flat against a board, and cannot be thrust, because pushing it drives the point back at the user rather than into the work.

For some jobs, very well. Cord, rope, twine, webbing, strapping, sacking, netting, cable ties, packing tape and garden growth are all pull cuts, and this is a better tool for them than most straight knives. For most other jobs, badly. It will not slice food on a board, will not carve, will not baton, will not spread, will not drill and will not be used one-handed while your other hand holds the work steady, because both hands are needed to get into and out of the rings. If you were hoping for a knife to keep in a bag for general use, buy one of our straight fixed blades and buy this because you want a karambit.

Not on a flat stone. A bench stone bridges a concave edge and touches only the two high points, so the hook flattens out over successive sharpenings and eventually stops being a hook. You want a round or tapered ceramic rod, a sharpening steel of small diameter, or a slip stone narrow enough to follow the curve, worked in short strokes along the arc and finished on the outside face to remove the burr. Our recurve knife page sets out the same problem in more detail, since it applies to any concave edge.

We cannot answer that for you and you should treat any seller who does with suspicion. What we can tell you is why this shape attracts more attention than most. Knife legislation often names features rather than types, and a karambit carries two named features at once: a curved or hooked fixed blade, and a finger ring. A second ring adds a third consideration, because wording drafted to cover knuckle knives sometimes describes a weapon held by rings across more than one finger, and that language can be read onto a two-ring karambit even though the design intent is completely different. Rules vary by country and, within countries, by state, province and city, and import rules differ again from carry rules. Check yours, and if the rings are the problem, ask us for the single-ring or plain-grip build at no extra cost. Our full tang karambit page covers how knife law treats blade shape in more general terms.

Three pieces, three different answers. The Karambit, Full Tang is the closest relative, with the same 7 inch blade and almost the same weight, but a single forefinger ring and an inch more length overall: pick it if you want a karambit you can re-grip, spin and release normally. The Claw Karambit is a shorter 6 inch blade with a deeper hook and a ring pommel, which makes it the most aggressive cutter of the three on cord and strapping. This double ring build is the one to choose if maximum retention is the point, or if you are collecting the form and want the two-ring variant. It is also the most restricted of the three, so read the legal note first.

5160 high-carbon spring steel, the same stock our smiths use for kukris and swords, forged down from leaf spring in the Nepali tradition. It is oil-quenched and then tempered back, which gives a blade that holds a hard working edge but stays tough rather than brittle. It is not stainless. It will take a patina with use and it will rust if you leave it wet, which is the trade every high-carbon blade asks you to make in exchange for an edge that sharpens easily and cuts well.

Yes. The tang runs the full length of the grip at full width and continues into the rear ring, so the ring is part of the same piece of steel as the blade rather than a fitting attached to it. The rosewood scales are pinned through that tang with two pins, and the exposed steel along the spine of the grip is the tang itself. This matters more on a karambit than on most knives, because both rings pull against the handle in use and a stick tang glued into a slotted handle, which is how inexpensive karambits are usually made, has nothing holding it when that load goes on.

Close, but not identical, and that is the nature of forged work. The profile is shaped by eye against a pattern, the grinds are done by hand, the jimping is filed one groove at a time and rosewood varies board to board in colour and figure. What does not vary is the specification: length, steel, construction, heat treatment and sharpness are held to the same standard on every piece. Our kukri machete page explains in more detail what can and cannot differ between two blades from the same bench.

It is cut and stitched to the curve of the blade, because a hooked blade cannot be pushed into a straight sheath without the point catching on the welt. The standard build is crocodile-embossed leather, saddle-stitched in a contrasting thread with brass studs, and it carries a separate strap that closes over the handle so the knife is held at two points rather than by friction alone. Draw it by releasing the strap first and lifting the knife clear along the line of the curve; do not try to pull it straight out. Belt, horizontal and neck carry are all available if you tell us how you intend to wear it.