Hand-Forged Ring Pommel Knife, Pierced Blade

No, and the test is the direction the point runs. On a karambit the blade hooks back so the tip finishes pointing toward the hand that holds it, which means every cut is a pull: you place the hook behind something and draw it in. On this knife the belly sweeps outward and the point finishes ahead of the handle, so it cuts on a push or a slice, exactly like an ordinary knife. The ring at the butt is the only thing the two have in common, and a ring is a handle feature rather than a blade one. If you want a hooked blade that cuts on the pull, we forge four karambits and any of them will do what this one will not.

No, and this is the one we would most like you to read before ordering. Field dressing an animal is not one task, it is a dozen, and each wants a different hold: a pinch grip on the blade for fine work around the head and cape, a full grip for long pulls down the belly, a choked-up grip for detail around joints, and a reversed grip for opening skin without cutting into the gut. A finger ring gives you one grip and does not let go of it quickly. It also puts your index finger in a fixed position when what you need is your index finger on the spine steering the point. There is nothing wrong with the blade for cutting, but the hilt is the wrong hilt for that job, and a hunter who buys this will return it. Any of our straight-bladed hunting and bushcraft knives is the better purchase, and we would rather sell you one of those.

A modern design piece. It takes a ringed handle, which comes from the karambit tradition, and puts it behind a broad forward-cutting blade, which does not, and no historical pattern we know of combines the two. That makes it a fantasy piece in the same sense as several others in our range: honestly made, orthodox in construction, and not a reproduction of anything. Bought for what it is, it is a striking object with real retention and a blade that cuts well on a push. Bought as a karambit or as a hunting knife it will disappoint, which is why both of those are answered above rather than buried.

They are decoration, and we would rather say so than dress it up. They are not lightening holes in any useful sense: three small circles remove a few grams from a 390 gram knife, which changes nothing you could feel. They are not fullers, which are forged or ground channels that work in an entirely different way. And they are certainly not blood grooves, which are not a real thing at all. What they are is a graduated visual rhythm through the widest part of the flat, cleanly drilled and finished, and they look good. Our deep-fullered kukri page sets out the structural argument about cutwork and where bending stress actually sits, if you want the engineering rather than the aesthetics. If you would rather have the blade plain, we forge it that way at no extra cost.

Yes, appreciably, and nobody selling pierced blades tends to mention it. Rust does not start on the flat of a blade, which gets wiped every time the knife is handled. It starts on the surfaces a cloth never reaches, and the inside wall of a drilled hole is the most reliable example there is: it is enclosed, it holds moisture by capillary action, oil does not reach it when you wipe the flats, and on a mirror-polished carbon blade the first spot of rust in there is both visible and awkward to remove. The same applies to the inner face of the ring. It is entirely manageable, and takes a cotton bud and ten seconds, but you have to actually do it. If the knife is going to be used hard or stored in a damp place, the plain blade and the dark forge finish are the sensible pairing, and both cost the same.

Because they look right, mostly. Pins pass through the tang and the two scales and clamp the sandwich together, giving mechanical hold that does not depend on adhesive, and that matters on a knife where the handle takes load in odd directions, as a ringed handle does. But the structural work is done by the first two: a pin near the front of the scale and one near the back will carry everything the handle can be asked to carry, and every pin after that is contributing very little except appearance. Five on a six inch handle is a design choice, not an engineering one, and it is a common and perfectly honest one. The thing actually worth checking on any pinned handle is not how many pins there are but how they sit. They should be flush with the timber, show no gap or halo around the shaft, and appear in the same positions on both faces.

Single-edged, with the grind running along the deep belly of the blade and sweeping forward to the point, and the spine left thick behind it. The wide flat between the grind line and the spine is where the cutwork sits, which is the part of the blade with the most material and the least going on. It is ground for slicing rather than chopping: the long curved edge means that on a draw cut, a continuously changing part of the edge meets the work, which is the same principle behind the belly of a skinning blade even though the hilt here rules that use out.

Cord, twine, packing tape, cardboard, sacking, webbing, light garden growth and general workshop tidying, all done with a grip that cannot be dropped or twisted out of your hand. The deep belly makes it a good slicer on a draw. What it will not do is anything needing a grip change, anything needing you to put a thumb or finger on the spine to steer, or anything involving impact. It is also not a kitchen knife: the ring means you cannot hold it in any of the ways food preparation asks for. Most people who buy this will display it, and that is a perfectly good reason to own it.

It should, but do not leave it to chance, because on a ringed knife a poor fit makes the piece unusable rather than merely uncomfortable. Measure the second knuckle of your index finger, which is the widest part that has to pass through: wrap a strip of paper around it, mark the overlap and measure the strip. You want roughly two to four millimetres of clearance on that figure. Too tight and your finger will not go through, or will not come out again quickly. Too loose and the knife rotates around the ring instead of being indexed by it, which defeats the point of having one. Send us your measurement and we will forge the ring to it at no extra cost, or tell us your glove size and whether you work gloved and we will size sensibly from that.

We cannot answer that for you and you should be wary of any seller who claims they can. What is worth knowing is that a finger ring is named as a restricted feature in its own right in a good deal of knife legislation, separately from blade length and separately from blade shape, so a ringed knife can be restricted where an identical knife with a plain handle is unremarkable. Rules vary by country and, within countries, by state, province and city, and import rules differ again from carry rules. Check yours before ordering. If the ring is the problem, the plain-handle build costs no more and takes no longer.

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.

Close, but not identical, and that is the nature of forged work. The profile is drawn out by eye against a pattern, the grind is done by hand, the ring is forged and filed individually, the holes are drilled and finished one at a time so their spacing varies slightly, and rosewood differs 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.