THAI STYLE JUNGLE KNIVES

 

 THAI STYLE JUNGLE KNIVES

Over the past few years in Thailand, and the Philippines I have been enjoying camping and foraging with my many friends. In fact Yesterday was spent fishing and foraging for snails and wild edibles in the woods. My friends know quite a bit about the local wild edibles so I tend to listen and learn from them.

In the evening, we cooked the fish ,snails and mushrooms that we collected in the woods ,we feasted on those goodies ,along with the ever present sticky rice.

A few years ago, A lady friend and me  headed to the small town of Laopaksai, in Thailand. In that town, I met a local blacksmith and tool maker named Saijung Kaipo. His forge was set up next to his house. I really liked his simple forge and the simplistic way his show was set up,such as the old tractor tire he uses for a water trough, primitive bellows etc. I noticed that Saijung Kaipo, uses a lot of scrap metal, leaf springs etc. for his knives and tools.

Saijung can make several different sizes and styles of knives but ,what I like the most are his hand forged Axe and Hatched heads. These heads remind me of some of the hand forged tomahawk heads I have seen in the USA.

These Knives and Axe/hatchet heads have a nice heft , some of the knives come with tubular handles and others with wood. One thing that I have noticed in Thailand (at least in this area) is that they don't seem to use a sheath for their jungle knives like you see in the Philippines or Malaysia. I have seen some knife sheaths here made from a heated and flattened piece of PVC pipe tho, pretty cool and efficient.

Over a period of a few months, I hung out with saijung, learning his style of knife making. He even showed me how to make an Axe head, it was a bit tough to do, but we managed to get it done using his simple tools. I have studied blacksmithing in Arizona, Minnesota, the Philippines and Now Thailand.

I like learning these skills from true experts in their fields, using simple techniques, tools and age old skills. It feels good to have this skill set in my bag of wilderness tricks.

See you on the trail!

Col Tomahawk