Fellcarve Hand Forged Damascus Kukri Knife with Walnut Scales & Brass Bolster | About 16 Inches Overall | Leather Sheath and Two Companion Knives | Norse Camp Gift | RK-2195

The Fellcarve is a hand forged Damascus kukri, the forward angled Nepalese chopper that has been carried as a working tool and a fighting blade for the better part of four hundred years. The bend in the spine is not decoration. It throws the centre of percussion out towards the belly of the blade, so a knife weighing well under two pounds lands with the authority of a small hatchet while the front third stays fine enough for camp work. Where the edge meets the bolster you will find the cho, the small notched cut out that every honest kukri pattern carries. It reads as a symbol to most people, but it also does a quiet mechanical job by stopping a crack in the edge from running back into the tang.

This one is ground from folded 1095 and 15N20 Damascus and etched so the layers stand out as flowing rings across the belly of the blade. A cut band of Celtic knotwork runs along the spine from the bolster forward into the recurve. The handle is walnut, pinned three times, collared front and back in polished brass, and the tang runs the full length of it. Every piece is made by hand in the Czech Republic. Ransack Viking imports them, checks each one for grind, fit and finish before it goes on the shelf, and ships from our Memphis, Tennessee warehouse. It arrives in a stitched leather belt sheath with a front pouch holding the two traditional companions, the small karda utility knife and the chakmak burnisher.

A recurve and a drop point cut in completely different ways, and the guide to blade shapes covers how each behaves. For how a patterned blade compares with a plain one in use, Damascus against high carbon puts the two together. If you want a shorter belly for dressing game, the skinner knives cover that job.

Specifications

Why a kukri blade bends forward

Pick up a straight bladed chopper and a kukri of the same weight and the difference is obvious in the first swing. On a straight blade your hand and the point of impact sit on the same line, so a lot of the energy goes into your wrist. The kukri puts a bend of roughly twenty degrees into the blade just ahead of the grip, which drops the impact point below that line and turns the swing into something closer to an axe stroke. The mass in the wide belly does the cutting and the handle stays quiet. That is why Nepali households have used the same shape for splitting kindling, butchering and clearing brush for generations, and why the pattern was picked up wholesale by soldiers who had to carry one tool for everything.

The recurve towards the tip earns its keep too. It gives you a second, finer edge geometry near the point for the jobs a big chopper is normally bad at, such as trimming cord, notching a stake or working around a joint. The cho at the base is the last piece of the puzzle. Sharpening a kukri always leaves a stress point where the sharpened edge stops, and putting a rounded notch there gives the crack nowhere to start. Old smiths knew that long before anyone wrote down a word about fracture mechanics.

Folded Damascus steel and what the pattern actually is

The blade starts as a stack of 1095 high carbon steel and 15N20 nickel alloy sheet. The two take an acid etch very differently, 1095 going dark and 15N20 staying bright, which is what makes the pattern readable at all. The stack is forge welded, drawn out, cut, folded back on itself and welded again until the layer count runs into the hundreds. Grinding the bevel then cuts across those layers at an angle, and the rings and swirls you can see across the belly are simply the cross sections of the folds exposed by the grinder. No two billets ever come out the same, which is the honest reason your knife will not match the photograph line for line.

Once ground, the blade is heat treated and drawn back to 58 to 60 HRC. That is hard enough to hold a working edge through a long day of chopping and soft enough that the spine will flex rather than snap under a bad angle. Damascus at this hardness is not stainless. It will spot if it is left wet and it will take a patina over the years, which most owners come to like.

Engraving, runes and your own design

Use the rune converter on this page to turn a name, a date or a short phrase into Elder Futhark and we will cut it into the steel, the leather or the wood. If you would rather have a Viking pattern than a rune line, choose your own design in the engraving option above the add to cart button and tell us where it goes. Where a piece already carries an engraved design, your chosen engraving replaces it rather than sitting alongside it. Engraving is done here in the United States after the piece arrives, so it adds a few days to the lead time. Full detail is on the engraving page.

Handling and balance

The balance point sits an inch or so forward of the brass bolster, which is where you want it on a chopper. Hold it loosely, let the weight fall and steer rather than force it. A tight grip on a kukri fights the blade and tires your forearm out inside ten minutes. The walnut is left with enough shape at the swell to stop the handle sliding through a wet hand, and the brass butt collar gives your little finger something to hook against on a full swing.

For fine work, choke up so your thumb rests on the spine behind the knotwork band and use the last three inches of edge. That grip turns a large chopper into something you can carve with. The two companion knives in the sheath pouch cover the rest. The karda is a small utility blade for anything you would not want to do with eleven inches of steel, and the chakmak is unsharpened and is used to straighten and burnish the working edge between proper sharpenings.

Care

Wipe the blade dry after every use and put a thin film of mineral oil, camellia oil or plain gun oil on it before it goes back in the sheath. Do not store a carbon steel blade in leather for months on end, because tanned leather holds moisture and salts and will mark the steel. Hang the sheath and the knife separately if it is going into long storage. Feed the leather two or three times a year with a neutral cream. The walnut takes a rub of boiled linseed oil once a year and will darken pleasantly as it ages. Fuller detail on oiling and patina is in our knife care guide.

Damascus wants oil more than plain steel does, because the etch that shows the pattern also opens the surface, and caring for a Damascus pattern covers what to use.

Made in the Czech Republic

This kukri is made by hand in the Czech Republic by people who do this for a living, then imported by Ransack Viking. Nothing here is drop shipped straight from an importer catalogue to your door. Every piece lands at our Memphis warehouse first, gets unwrapped, gets looked at, and only then gets listed as in stock. That is also why processing takes one to two weeks rather than one to two days. Shipping inside the United States is free, returns run for seven days, and there is a genuine lifetime warranty against defects in the forging, the grind, the heat treat and the fittings, with no end date and no receipt needed.

A note on handmade variation

This is hand made, not machine made or bulk produced, so what arrives will not be a pixel for pixel copy of the photograph. The Damascus pattern is unique to the billet it was cut from and will not repeat. Walnut is a natural material, so grain, figure and tone vary from scale to scale, and two handles cut from different boards can look noticeably different in daylight. Hammer texture, the exact sweep of the recurve and the depth of the etch all shift a little from one piece to the next because a person made them rather than a machine. The dimensions, the steel and the build are the same every time. The character is not, and that is the point of buying something made by hand.

Frequently asked questions

Is it sharp out of the box

Yes. It is sharpened on a bevel suited to chopping rather than to slicing paper, so it is keen but not razor thin at the edge. Treat it as a working tool from the moment it arrives.

What are the two small knives in the sheath for

The karda is a small general purpose utility knife. The chakmak has no edge and is used to steel and straighten the main blade between sharpenings. Both are traditional to the pattern and both are included.

Will the Damascus pattern wear off

No. The pattern goes all the way through the steel because it is layered rather than printed. Repeated sharpening can dull the contrast at the very edge, and a light etch will bring it back if you ever want to.

Can I get runes cut into this one

Yes. The flat behind the knotwork band and the leather sheath both take engraving well. If you choose an engraved design it replaces the existing knotwork band rather than sitting next to it.

Is it full tang

Yes. The tang runs the whole length of the walnut handle and is pinned three times, which is what lets you use a knife this size for hard chopping without worrying about the joint.

How long will delivery take

Processing takes one to two weeks because every piece is checked at the Memphis warehouse before it ships, then standard United States shipping on top. Adding engraving adds a few days to that.

What is in the box

• Fellcarve Damascus kukri
• Stitched leather belt sheath with a front pouch
• Karda utility knife
• Chakmak burnisher
• Care and warranty card
• Hand made in the Czech Republic, shipped from our Memphis, Tennessee warehouse

Explore the range

See more in kukri knives, Viking knives, Norse arms and engraved and personalised pieces, or read the guides.