Kukuri failure.... It broke...

It's been like that for ahwile, John. Due to a wannabe hacker that Karda had to bounce, it was switched to members only view to keep him from making any more trouble. One bad apple spoiling the bunch and such.

Our shops in Nepal have been closed because of an unexpected lack of quality control. They will stay closed until we can improve the product quality you all expected from HI.

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I noticed an increasing number of complaints on Bladeforums about HI khukuri's. HI cannot justify the high premium they charge, over ebay specimens, unless their khukuri’s are that much better.

From a video I saw, made by the owners of Khukuri House, they go over to a location where khukuri's are made. The Khukuri House owners get to look at and pick which khukuri’s they want and negotiate the price with the knife makers. I suspect HI does not have a decent onsite “QA” inspector and the knife makers got used to cutting corners.

Actually, HI has several shops that make knives just for them. I suspect you don't know enough about the company.

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So, which shops are making the bad knives and why?

JShirley said:

Actually, HI has several shops that make knives just for them.

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The villagers are pick and choose though aren't they?

I wonder who does the selection?

SlamFire1 said:

I noticed an increasing number of complaints on Bladeforums about HI khukuri's. HI cannot justify the high premium they charge, over ebay specimens, unless their khukuri’s are that much better.

From a video I saw, made by the owners of Khukuri House, they go over to a location where khukuri's are made. The Khukuri House owners get to look at and pick which khukuri’s they want and negotiate the price with the knife makers. I suspect HI does not have a decent onsite “QA” inspector and the knife makers got used to cutting corners.

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I'm not going to get into a great depth of cross-forum discussion as that is bad form. John is a friend of mine whom I greatly respect, and the last thing I want to do is tramp muddy boots across his forum floors.

That said, there is a ridiculous amount of speculation in this post. There are a couple of issues going on here that Yangdu is hard at work fixing.

1.) From a health standpoint, her father who owns the business, is not a spring chicken. You really have to stay on top of the kamis in order to make sure they deliver what they promise. It's just the way that particular caste operates in their culture.

2.) The Maoists have been cracking down hard on more capitalist companies. HI is well known and not very well liked by them. The only way to get them to look the other way is to pay them off. There has also been a huge shortage of natural resources as of late. Coal is hard to come by and is rationed strictly. No coal. No fire. No fire, no good steel, etc etc etc.

3.) HI does not charge a "premium" inasmuch as a overly expensive amount "just because" that is socked away in Pala or Yangdu's bank account. HI is very much about doing good work and offering a real life for the poorest of the poor in Nepal. Pretty much all of the money goes to feeding the kamis, paying their medical bills, and keeping them constantly busy so that they can support their families. Yangdu's luxurious digs consist of a double wide in the Nevada desert

The poor QC is being addressed, and unlike most companies who would sell the product and just deal with the complaints if there were any, Yangdu is being very proactive in making sure that the best khuks are coming out of the shops.