Khyber knives

[Timo Nieminen]

Here are three Khyber knives (or two and a half, since one is a bare blade).

I bought the top one new, in the late 1980s. Horn grip. Maker unknown; it's the kind of thing made by the likes of Windlass and Deepeeka. 745g, scabbard is 210g. The bare blade is old, with forging flaws, delaminations, cracks in the spine from being stood on by camels or similar. The blade isn't quite straight, but is straight enough to be usable if I put a grip on it. The rim around the tang is a separate piece, soldered(?) on. 670g. The bottom one is recently acquired. Scabbard has strips of iron/steel around it, and tin chape and throat. Horn grip with nails/studs. 515g, scabbard is 252g.

As can be seen from the weights, the modern one is heavy for its size. Not unusably so, but it does carry a lot of that extra weight around the tip. To compare the three, the thicknesses of the spines and blades (halfway between edge and spine) are, at the base of the blade, mid-blade, and near the tip are:

Top spine 10.4mm 10.3mm 9.0mm
Top blade 3.8mm 3.8mm 3.0mm
Middle spine 9.5mm 9.5mm 6.9mm
Middle blade 3.7mm 2.8mm 3.1mm
Bottom spine 8.9mm 8.2mm 5.4mm
Bottom blade 2.8mm 2.9mm 2.7mm