Once in a while, even the Pakis make one right...

[Joe Demko]

A friend of mine recently picked up a Pakistani copy of a W-49 bowie at a flea market. He paid a whopping $9 for it, complete with shoddy fake leather sheath. He asked me to sharpen it for him. To my surprise, the steel was actually hard enough to require the use of the diamond rods on my Spyderco sharpener for the initial profiling. It took some effort to put an edge on it, for the piece was completely blunt as well as hard. After all that work, I did some playing around with the knife...I chopped some kindling for my woodstove (dry, seasoned cherry wood), rammed the point into a log (same) and twisted it free, and cut up a chicken. The knife retained its edge and suffered no damage to the point. The blade actually appears to be of about as good quality as the genuine W-49 I used to have. The level of finish isn't as good on the handle and guard, though. The guard is of the typical S- shape, but isn't as thick or as polished as on a genuine W-49.
With a little effort, this would actually be a good field knife. The "quillions" need trimmed off and the handle could stand to be sanded down and refinished_it's thick and slathered with some kind of varnish_but the blade is what it needs to be.
Frankly, I'm amazed. Every Pakistani knife I ever handled before this was absolute junk.

 

[real_name]

There are British users of this site. In British slang the word Paki is the same as our N word.
There was a Top Ten of offensive words in a British newspaper a year or so ago, Paki was second most offensive after that word.
I know it's a literal abbreviation, and most Americans do not realize the implications. I'm only giving you a heads up that a casual browser from the UK would get the wrong impression about us all after seeing the thread title.

 

[tellner]

It has pretty much the same connotations in parts of Canada. When I lived in BC there were "Paki" jokes and "Paki-bashing" (beating up anyone who looked Indian or Pakistani) was a popular sport in a certain set of young men. They found out that the ones with the turbans and bracelets also carried knives and weren't afraid to bash back

 

[hso]

They found out that the ones with the turbans and bracelets also carried knives and weren't afraid to bash back

I'm sure the holligans got Sikh of that in a hurry.