What size steel for a karambit?

A karambit is a small knife, and the calculator treats it as a forging job. The preset is a 3 in blade (measured along the blank, hook included), about 0.95 in tall at the ricasso, with a 3/16 in spine and a 4 1/2 in full tang that ends in a finger ring. Forged, it comes from 1 1/4 × 3/16 in bar: you draw out the blade and tang, then forge in the hook and the ring, so the bar only has to clear the ricasso height. That is about 6 in of bar per blade (6 1/4 in with the saw cut), around 7 oz of bar for about 4 oz of finished steel, and seven blades from a 48 in bar. A 3/16 in spine is just under 5 mm, close to the half centimeter an Indonesian study gives for the back of a traditional blade.

Stock removal is a different job. Laid out flat, a karambit blank is about 2 in tall once you count the hook, which drops below the edge line, and the ring, which hangs below the handle. A blank cut to its full shape has to come from 2 in or wider flat bar or plate, not from the bar the calculator shows. The calculator's stock-removal figure is for a straight blank: about 7 3/4 in of the same 1 1/4 in bar, around 8 oz of bar for 5 oz finished, three blades from a 24 in bar. It only holds if you grind the blade straight and bend the curve in afterward, which some makers do.

What a karambit is, and where it comes from

The karambit is a small curved hand knife from Indonesia and the Malay world, widely associated with the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra. It is spelled kerambit or karambit, and kurambiak or karambiak in Minangkabau. It is single-edged, with the edge on the inside of the curve, and the curve is tight: a 2019 study from Universitas Putra Indonesia YPTK in Padang describes it as close to 90 degrees. It is also small. The same study gives the usual size as about 5 × 8 cm (about 2 × 3 in), with a wooden handle and a blade that thins from about half a centimeter at the back down to the edge, so the 3 in preset is close to the traditional scale. The study says the hole in the handle, which takes the index finger, is there for grip.

Old examples survive in museums and the antique trade. The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam holds a Minangkabau one from West Sumatra, recorded before 1887 and cataloged as a lawi ayam, after the curved tail feather of a rooster: iron alloy, forged, with a wooden handle, carried in a sheath or in the fold of a sarong. A dealer's 19th- to early-20th-century Malay kerambit, from the peninsula or Sumatra, weighs only 89 g (about 3 oz), with a carved wooden hilt and a wooden sheath held together by three plaited rattan bands. Modern ones often stray from the old pattern: the online Nusantara Museum's write-up on the Minangkabau kerambit says modern folding karambits, fantasy designs and commercial claims often make the blade bigger or more dramatic than the old regional knives. If you want a traditional one, size it from the old examples, not from a modern catalog.

The origin stories below are told often but aren't confirmed, so treat them as stories rather than history. The YPTK study says the karambit began as a farm tool, a small relative of the Indonesian sickles used for cutting grass, rice and alang-alang (a tall grass), before it became a weapon; the Nusantara Museum calls a farm-tool origin plausible but not fully documented. Other stories say its shape was copied from the claw of the Sumatran tiger, and that Minangkabau migrants carried it to Java and the Malay Peninsula. The Tropenmuseum's own catalog note claims it descends from the Arabian jambiya.

Stock for a karambit

Cut flat, a karambit eats wide steel: 2 in is the minimum for the preset, and one online how-to starts from O1 at least 3 1/2 in wide. The narrow-bar route is to grind the blade straight, heat it and bend it to shape, then hammer out the wrinkles the curve pushes into the edge. For grinding the inside of the curve, a maker on BladeForums recommends a 1 in wide contact wheel with the belts split to fit.

Widths assume blade height + 1/8 in rounded up to stock; thickness is the finished spine rounded up. Change the inputs above for your own pattern.

Steels that suit it

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