A very kind forum member has offered to act as an intermediary between myself and a blade smith in the Far East in order to try and get a Parang made up for me (They, the forum member, have asked not to be named, for fear of being swamped with requests for other Parangs to be made for other members, and so The Intermediary Who Must Not Be Named will be referred to by myself, here on in as TIWMNBN yes, I know, its daft 
).
The drawing below, is based on one of those used by RM. Its primary purposes will be rather like that of a large western camp knife preparation of firewood, some butchery, food prep, and so forth.
I purposely havent specified things like the thickness of the blade or the type of cross section and grind, for several reasons.
Firstly, the blade smith works to a strong local cultural tradition in respect to these features. He is in his 70s and therefore has a lifetimes experience of forging blades and using them, which I do not, and he will know what works best, and I am happy to learn from this.
Secondly, and this may appear at first to contradict my first point, I would like to solicit opinions on the design from the members here. Have I made any serious mistakes with the design and blade profile etc? Now, this is where it gets interesting, TIWMNBN will hopefully have the opportunity at some point during the next few days, to show the drawing below to the blade smith, and will return the smiths comments on the design, to me. In turn it has been suggested to me by TIWMNBN that any modifications that members here would like to see to the initial design below, could also be shown to the blade smith.
It strikes me that there is an interesting possibility for a cultural exchange here, in respect to blade design between us and the blade smith in the Far East.
So, to that end, I would be very interested to here from members who are experienced in the use of large blades. Of course, anyone is welcome to join in, and all suggestions for improvements will be given serious consideration.
The drawing that can be downloaded at the URL will print out at A4 size, so feel free to print it off, draw on top of it, rescan it, and repost it to illustrate your ideas, should you wish to do so. And for that matter, if youd like to download it to use as a basis for the pattern to make your own version of the knife, then by all means do so.
This one will print to A4 size (I hope ):
http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t179/B3xIq7/parang_bcuk_large.jpg
Best regards,
Paul.
).The drawing below, is based on one of those used by RM. Its primary purposes will be rather like that of a large western camp knife preparation of firewood, some butchery, food prep, and so forth.
I purposely havent specified things like the thickness of the blade or the type of cross section and grind, for several reasons.
Firstly, the blade smith works to a strong local cultural tradition in respect to these features. He is in his 70s and therefore has a lifetimes experience of forging blades and using them, which I do not, and he will know what works best, and I am happy to learn from this.
Secondly, and this may appear at first to contradict my first point, I would like to solicit opinions on the design from the members here. Have I made any serious mistakes with the design and blade profile etc? Now, this is where it gets interesting, TIWMNBN will hopefully have the opportunity at some point during the next few days, to show the drawing below to the blade smith, and will return the smiths comments on the design, to me. In turn it has been suggested to me by TIWMNBN that any modifications that members here would like to see to the initial design below, could also be shown to the blade smith.
It strikes me that there is an interesting possibility for a cultural exchange here, in respect to blade design between us and the blade smith in the Far East.
So, to that end, I would be very interested to here from members who are experienced in the use of large blades. Of course, anyone is welcome to join in, and all suggestions for improvements will be given serious consideration.
The drawing that can be downloaded at the URL will print out at A4 size, so feel free to print it off, draw on top of it, rescan it, and repost it to illustrate your ideas, should you wish to do so. And for that matter, if youd like to download it to use as a basis for the pattern to make your own version of the knife, then by all means do so.
This one will print to A4 size (I hope
):http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t179/B3xIq7/parang_bcuk_large.jpg
Best regards,
Paul.
this is so silly) could get me any number of off the shelf jungle knives, and Im willing to bet that all of them would be useful tools. One of the things that I found attractive about the Ibans work is that I was required to give dimensions of my hand, so that the knife handle (which I imagine will look very different to the one in the illustration above, having seen an example of his work since I produced the drawing some weeks ago) would fit my hand perfectly, and as I understand it all of the handles made by this smithy are made for the comfort of each individual owner. A nice touch, not absolutely essential, but nice.
