Thoughts on the Kerambit

They do take some getting used to. Kerambits are trendy right now, but they aren't The Unholy Ichor of Great Cthulhu or anything like that. They have limitations like every other weapon. A friend who spends several months in Indonesia every year doing Silat says they are more assassination weapons than anything else over there.

I have not trained with a kerambit, but I have handled one and I have taken FMA before.

My criticisms of it are as follows:

1. It seems to be a contact weapon that is more "offense" than "defense" in its actual employment. It has no meaningful reach and requires you to get past the defense of any longer ranged weapon to even get into play. As mentioned above, it seems to be most suited as an assassination weapon.

2. As a contact weapon of otherwise limited utility due to its configuration, it provides little meaningful defense. You might be able to make it work against a longer blade, or a stick, or maybe even a pistol under the right circumstances, but you are going to pay dearly if you don't have surprise and are forced to defend with it.

3. It's great against the lightly clothed, but I would be way more wary of it in a Northern clime where people sometimes wear a surprising amount of layers of clothing or some really tough outerwear. As a slash/ripper, if it doesn't really "bite" its target, it ain't doing much.

4. It relies on too much grip shifting techniques for my tastes. Yes it has a retention ring for this purpose, but the thing reminds me too much of the balisong, which is also more show than go and hence a relatively minor weapon in FMA that has nonetheless become "cool" for reasons other than combat suitability.

Fortunately, experts like Mr. Tarani, frown upon spinning.

That said, I still think of getting one to play around with.

The actual utility of most martial arts explained in one easy lesson:

Great little blade. smaller k-bits are more used agained vascular and connective tissue targets rathar than against other typical or classical targets. (sorry about the vagueness, had the original points of attack in my first response but decided to take them out after previewing because I didn't want to give anyone a "map")

One to the aspects I love about them is the concealability. When facing an armed attacker the BG shouldn't "know" you are defending/attacking with a k-bit, its should come as a very pointed suprise.

The traditional disarms are a pain against a k-bit, but they still work. As well as knifehand control and defanging the snake.

I believe they were originally EDC knives in the indonesia/malaysia areas, I think I read about that on tarani's site.

Personally waiting on one to be ground out. I stopped trusting folders (I've got a few autofolders that I like but aren't "legal") and have switched to fixed blades. A K-Bit is the first one I ordered to get made.

My friend Bobbe has been going to Indonesia to train every year for about the last 10 or 12. He's got several systems' kerambit techniques. They almost never flip it around. There's a couple specialized moves, but that's about it.

On the plus side they're hard to disarm, work well close in (especially if you like hooks and uppercuts) and you can fillet an arm or whatever pretty quickly with a continuous cutting motion. On the downside they aren't great for penetrating stabs, and you give up a lot of reach.

cold steels new option

cold steel recently started producing the STEEL TIGER and it is relativley inexpensive at about sixty there about as cheap as you can get it or rather they in general take some getting used to on this particular knife can accomidate a wide range of grips fencing, fist, kali(for lack of a better word) the finger ring is efective as a punching aid and the cuvature means it can be drawn in verry tight spaces although thrusts are almost impossible to pull off and dissarms are extremely difficult and suprisingly fast on the draw the point is effective at ripping and "pecking" however not very alike the columbia river knife and tool company has a plan B ryan fixxed blade