cheap ulu

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Janne

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Feb 10, 2016
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An Ulu is mezzaluna ( 'half moon' in italian, traditional kitchen cutting implement) in all but it's name!

:)
It is a great knife to use in nature.
4 Pounds is a fantastic price. Everybody should rush and get one!
 
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Robson Valley

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Nov 24, 2014
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I hope the steel is hard enough to sharpen properly. Watch some Inuit YouTubes.
Quiche and apple pie isn't sealskin or muktuk.

Carve a shallow dish with a longer radius so you can rock the ulu to dice things.
In a caucasian kitchen, quite useful. What kind of a handle do you get?
The Inuit need scarce wood for more important things so they don't need a dish.

You can cut some blades from a rusty 10"/30cm saw blade. I paid $2.00.
Umialak has 2 legs, more space for your fingers to grip.
 
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Janne

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Good for chopping herbs. There is a reason the knife design developed towards the familiar knife shapes.
I have cut all sorts of food with a mezzalunga/ulu, but a knife does it easier and better.
I put reindeer horn on one, and local Lofoten arctic Birch with those thin strips of the brown wood that some Cuban smokes have in the boxes.

I assume it is made in China from softish stainless steel. Still a good price, worth buying and trying!
 

Janne

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If you like it, replacing the handle is fun!

Is it a model with a 'T handle" or does it have two prongs to hold the handle?

I believe all goods sold in EU should be marked with the country of origin, but have seen lots of that are not.
For that price you do not expect a country where the workers have decent wages.
 

Robson Valley

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With a shear to cut metal and a grinder for shaping and sharpening,
making an Ulu in a factory isn't much of a technical challenge.

No matter where it comes from, it's a blade shape and a technique worth learning.
Learning how "other people" do their butchering and fod prep.

A knife in a western kitchen is no better than an ulu for many tasks.
There's an ulu and a dish in every one of my family kitchens.
Except mine. Cleavers for 50 years. Soon to get some Ulu.
 

Janne

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I find that a mezzalunga does not have the reach of depth as a knife. Difficult to clean and fillet a large fish ( tried), difficult to butcher a lamb ( tried) difficult to cut up larger pieces of meat nicely ( tried) difficult to cut bread ( tried).

My base knife that does I use maybe 75% of the time is a Guyto with 27cm blade.
 
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Robson Valley

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Thank you, Greenshoots, for the link. Appears that a useful design gets picked up and used all over the world.
At least when you buy one, you buy somebody else's design idea and a pattern. Then you're better off to make your own.
Even a totally crapped out rusty handsaw blade would be nice sheet metal to use.

To the Inuit, the ulu or umialak is the woman's camp knife. They have and use straight edges as well.
I don't know about the edges used by the Aleut people or the others in the Eastern Arctic.
 

Janne

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Eastern Arctic - Same use straight blades. The peoples living along the northern Russian Federation shore also use straight blades.
One is unusual though, as the blade is heavily assymetric. The famous Yakut blades.
 

Robson Valley

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At 4BPS each, I'd buy a bunch of them for Solstice/Christmas gifts.
I hauled off and bought all mine from The Ulu Factory in Alaska.

I plan to make 2 sizes from the saw blade, if I can. Wonder what the difference will be.
Maybe a SAK versus a Bowie 'pig-sticker?'
 

Nice65

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I hear ulu and think one handed curved blade with single handle atop. Often used in a shallow wooden bowl, but a general purpose skinner and slicer knife, particularly with a mitt on.

05205-C0-E-9-C28-4573-9-B58-0-CA201-C3-AE07.jpg




Mezzaluna, I think of a two handled Italian herb and veg chopper, much larger. The name means half moon in Italian. Sometimes with two or three parallel blades.

9-C188-A89-D54-E-44-AC-BF67-F16851-D84-A9-D.jpg
 
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Janne

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th


Just found that half-moon beauty on the internet.....
I think the handle bit is also size related ( and maybe how many blades?

But every person should try one of those for 4 pounds! A bit of practice on chicken, and people will get impressed when you carve your Christmas Turkey with it!
 

Robson Valley

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Ulu has a single leg & handle. Umialak has 2 legs. No equivalent english words.
Good examples of modern design departures with Google Images.
Good original old designs in UBC/MOA Online collection. I will use those.

For First Nations use, practically never seen below 60Lat across North America.
First strike flint flakes are far sharper with no efforts anyway.
No common flint in the Arctic?

I've seen those big, 2-handed mezzaluna in the older pizza shops.
What a grunt to sharpen.
 

Nice65

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What a grunt to sharpen.

Butchers steel type sharpening job on those, nothing fancy.

So the Ulu I posted is two leg, an Umialak? The single ones I see vary from a central handle, to a single leg with... hold on, I’ll find pics.

Ulu?

86749-D84-3-E84-4611-A23-C-FAC3-B090-BF4-F.jpg


A969-B218-672-F-4-CFC-9-B02-A32-A1-E1-A122-A.jpg


E49-D0445-69-DE-417-E-B90-F-C8-CBB83-E158-D.jpg


Umialak?


25-BEED30-232-B-412-E-8-BB7-4-CDD8-F7-E6-B78.jpg






Mezzaluna is much bigger, not a single handed knife, and suited to shredding herbs, veg, trimmed meat etc. Usually a stainless no-name steel, sharpness being less important for the intended purposes.
 
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Janne

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Interesting, the one with an antler handle looks like the one I did, except that I finished the antler ends in mahogany!

Beautiful steels!

Mezzalunas come in various sizes.
 

Robson Valley

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Yeah, a language detail that the white explorers were fully prepared to gloss over.
We really need a bunch of women in here to discuss the names for women's knives.

Eskimo is a term from ******* french which means: "eaters of raw meat."
The whole Canadian population very quietly slipped into using the correct name.

When I stop to think of making a sharp edge, the umialak is a lot more work to cut out with the 2 legs.
I plan to use an angle grinder to cut off the saw blade teeth and cut the ulu forms from the saw blade and that's it.
I'll grind one to a double bevel of about 20 degrees and finish that with fine sandpapers and see how it works.
I suppose that the Inuit bought hack saw blades from the Hudson's Bay Company post store and that was all. Bone handle.

The ones from the Ulu Factory (umialaks included) are cut from some sort of stainless steel.
They cut and sharpen OK. I just figured the saw blade would be best for the old man's explorations.

I want to work outside but maybe 20-30 cm snow tomorrow.

Buying one for 4BPS looks better all the time.
 

tombear

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There's a long European tradition of half round/round/head knife/lunette knives, call them what you will, for leather working. most have a single upright central handle like the top one in post 17, a few have it leaning to one side. There's about 8 pages on using and sharpening them in Al Stohlmans "Leather craft Tools".. Unfortunately the only round knives I could find (I'm not set up for heat treating even if I had time to make one ) were prohibitively expensive.

https://hwebber.co.uk/shop/c-s-osbo...g-stones-leather-knives/saddlers-round-knife/

They are less straight from the US but then you could get hit for import duty. I've been looking for a old Barnsley made one to do up but so far nothing worth working on has turned up.

In the end I went for a Grohmanns Ulu, made a leather sheath for it and on RVs suggestion a indented chopping board from elm, since I finally had some. Theres a thread somewhere.

It cut through the what? 5 MM? veg tan I was working on as sweet as a nut. Then I ran out of leather!

Evidently there's a almost unheard of womens martial art/defence based on the ulu, . Not my thing, just stumbled on it when looking to buy a ulu.

ATB

Tom
 

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