Socket Bowie

Is there anything tougher than an all steel knife?

Knives made completely of steel have been made in Nepal for hundreds of years. You can see forged steel handles on historical koras or ornate tulwar style cast handles on the khukuris intended for officers in the late 20th century or even nowadays, with rough, heavy use villager khukuris sometimes having steel pipes welded on as a handle. This socket style of construction is common in the Filipino traditional bladesmithing  and was popularised in the west by Tai Goo and heavily utilised by James Helm. It was only after we had produced this style of handle for 5 years that the team found a pre-existing Nepali example while on a trek.

Our socket handles are made with a gently tapering. oval cross section to help fight rotation and to stop the handle from sliding free during chopping. The first big advantage of this monolithic steel construction method is that it has no pins, no scale, no buttcap. It is one continous piece of forged steel which makes it incredibly rugged and capable of obscenely rough treatment. You can pry with it, lever it, hammer on it from wherever you want. On an outdoors blade its surprising how much more capable this makes it. As of mid 2026 it is fully formed on the hammer, just like our falo khukuri. Aside from keeping as much of the charm of the process visible as possible it also produces a finely dimpled texture on the handle which helps with bare handed grip on what could otherwise be quite a slippery surface. While designed to be used bar handed this knife is a fantastic candidate for a leather/paracord wrap for a slighlty squishier handle, emergency cordage and a bit of flair.

The second advantage is its ability to be fitted with a shaft and used as a polearm. If you’re in an emergency situation this knife can take any branch and carve a taper into the end of it. It can then be pressed down for a tight fit, or you can make use of the hole at the rear to pin the shaft into place with a screw or nail you have brought with you or even a small wooden peg you have carved at the same time as the shaft. A smaller shaft is a great reach extender, adds speed for brush cleaning and adds chopping power if needed. A longer shaft transforms this knife into quite a fearsome spear for both hunting and defence. If you envision yourself using this aspect of the blade more frequently there’s no reason you can’t fashion a walking staff that is already perfectly shaped and ready to accept the socket. You’ll note that the centreline of the knife handle is not in line with the tip- this is important for retention and ergonomics. For best performance when used as a spear the shaft should not taper evenly on both sides. Instead the spine side should continue straight with all the taper occuring at the edge side of the shaft.This will ensure the shaft centreline and the tip centreline are aligned. Some rough internal dimensions to help guide such a project. The opening at the rear is ~35mm tall and ~24mm wide. The cavity is ~4.75″ long. At the far end of the cavity it is ~28mm tall and ~21mm wide.

The third advantage is storage- this handle is hollow which means it can be used to store tinder, rations, smaller tools or similar emergency supplies. As part of our 2026 updates to this model each socket blade will ship with a plug we have made to close up the back of the handle. The thick, firm closed-cell foam in our kydex press needs replacing periodically and it has proved to be an excellent and abundant material for this task. Each plug is fitted to your specific handle to ensure a reliably snug fit. It can be pressed in with the palm to lock it in there and features a paracord loop so that it can easily be removed from the handle. The fit is snug enough that the blade can easily be suspended from this loop though we do not recommend this. Instead we recommend that before you insert the plug you pull the cord from the interior side, pulling it flush against the plug and ensuring it can’t catch on any shrubbery. We also ship each handle with a small zip lock bag to fill with emergency supplies of your choice and an Eye Screw that can be used to secure a shaft either with your fingers or with the assistance of a small stick or rod.

We’ve been producing this blade since the beginning of Kailash however it started to gain a bit of traction in the last few years, with customers finding it to be an exceptionally versatile, beatable and high value outdoors knife with little else like it on the market. In response to this we have made some pattern changes in 2026 to help maximize the potential of the concept. The tip is now less of a gradual drop point and more of a spear point to help optimise its alignment and penetration when used as a spear. The handle is now no longer canted for superior shaft alignment and has been shortened to 4.75″ to reduce unnecessary weight and provide better chopping balance in the newly created shorter lengths.

The new 9″ pattern is closest to the original 8.5″ pattern but is slightly leaner for control and balance in hand. This blade has the broadest capability when used without a shaft- long and fast enough for some brush clearing tasks, powerful enough to chop decently and broad enough to be batoned confidently through thicker logs. It’s by no means too large or too forwardly balanced for carving, skinning and you may find that the additional length is actually helpful with food prep. It’s the classic “Big knife”. Capable of small knife tasks, but with the power and beatability to push far, far beyond them.

We don’t have many straight blades shorter than 8″ and sometime in the last few years we woke up to ourselves about how strange that is! We love big knives and our construction methods are very well suited to them but most people love moderately sized outdoors blades and have a broad and time-honed skillset that lets them make the most of them. Hopefully the new 7″ pattern helps to give these knife lovers what they need. At this shorter length it trades off this brush clearing capability and greater chopping power for greater agility and control in carving, skinning and bushcraft tasks. It also gets notably lighter and more compact, taking up less space on the pack or belt and freeing up weight for other tools and supplies. It’s just as tough but is a lot better at the kind of knifey tasks that most people expect their knives to do.

Finally we have the new 5″ pattern which is actually Andrew’s favourite of the bunch. This blade is not good at clearing brush by itself- it’s just too short. If you’re used to normal knives you’ll probably be pretty impressed by its chopping power despite it being the shortest and thinnest of the bunch. At this length we’ve specified a thinner spine to help it be a little more slicey and a little more packable- it’s hard to produce the kind of chopping, prying and batoning loads on a blade this short to need the full 7mm and 6mm is more than sufficient. Shorter, lighter a little slicier- if you’re coming over from bushcraft knives rather than larger hunting/bowie knives you might find that this fits what you want our of a blade more than the 7″. The big reason it’s Andrew’s favourite though is that at this shorter and more compact package it’s just as tough and can pull all the same tricks. If you need chopping power you can baton it even crossgrain. If you need to pry you can hammer it in then lever it with a branch stuck in the handle. You can still fit it onto a shaft and get a supremely capable spear. It stores just as many goodies in the handles as the bigger blades.

5″: 6mm at bolster, 475g
7″: 7mm at bolster,  550g
9″: 7mm at bolster, 625g

All patterns have half their length as straight edge, half as belly and the option for 3″ of back edge/swedge

A final note- If you’re looking for something recurved and with more power but are wondering where our socket khukuri went we’ve retired it as a standalone model and instead replaced it with a socket handle option on our super popular Falo blade 🙂

Dependable, Focused and with a few tricks up its Sleeve. What more could you ask of a knife?

Before Purchase, please read through the “Options Info” segment of our “Learn” so you can learn about Finishes, sheaths, handle materials as well as the grind types we offer and how they affect the level of warranty you’ll receive.