Calculator › Knives › Khopesh
What size steel for a khopesh?
A khopesh with an 18 in blade, 1 7/8 in wide and 1/4 in at the spine, comes from 2 × 1/4 in bar, forged. BladeStock sizes the bar at blade width plus 1/8 in, which here comes to exactly 2 in. Those sizes follow the surviving swords: the bronze khopesh of Ramesses II in the Louvre is 57.5 cm (22.6 in) long and 4.8 cm (1.9 in) wide, and the calculator's 18 in blade and 5 in tang come to 23 in.
Forged, one blade takes about 17 1/2 in of bar: around 40 oz of steel for an estimated 28 oz finished. That is close to the old ones. A Late Bronze Age khopesh in the Royal Ontario Museum, 61.5 cm long, weighs 793.5 g, about 28 oz. An 18 in bar gives you one blade with almost nothing left over, and a 36 in bar gives two.
The curve is the catch. The calculator treats every blade as straight, so these numbers assume you forge the blade out straight and then bend the hook in. If you want to cut one from plate instead, you need plate as tall as the whole curve, not 2 in bar, and the stock-removal figure here will be far too low. Plan this one forged.
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Advanced: cuts, tong hold & tang
Stock removal: the bar is cut to blade + tang + clean-up, so the tang section and forged thickness below only change the finished-weight estimate. Switch to Forged and they change the stock length too.
Tang dimensions are estimated from the tang style until you change them. Measuring yours is worth doing: a forged blank's length depends on the tang's cross-section, not on what the tang is called.
Calibration: fill factors & grinding loss
Stock removal: fill factors only change the finished-weight estimate here. They set the stock length when the method is Forged. Grinding loss has no effect at all in stock removal, because the bar is cut straight to the profile and nothing is drawn out.
The fraction of the blade's and tang's bounding box that is actually steel once the bevels are ground. Distal taper is factored in separately (see "Distal taper" below, under What this assumed) and isn't editable here yet. These two fill factors are the ones worth replacing with your own measurements: weigh a finished blade, then adjust until the finished weight below matches the scale.
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What this assumed
Steel is only part of the cost. Add abrasives, handle, heat treat and your time, and see the price that actually pays you.
Forging damascus? Plan the billet: what to stack, how many restacks, and how much of each steel to buy.
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What the khopesh was
The khopesh is a sickle-shaped sword that developed from battle axes with crescent blades. The style began in Western Asia in the Bronze Age and reached Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period. The Royal Ontario Museum notes that the name is Egyptian, but the sword itself may have developed in Greater Syria. A typical khopesh is 50 to 60 cm (20 to 24 in) long, and the type went out of use around 1300 BC.
What survives is bronze. Several kings are shown holding a khopesh, and some were buried with them. The sword of Ramesses II in the Louvre, found at Qantir and inscribed with his names, dates from his reign, about 1279 to 1213 BC. The name is usually explained as the Egyptian word for a leg, as in a leg of beef, from the shape of the blade.
Not every khopesh was made to fight with. The one from Tutankhamun's tomb in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, 59.5 cm long, is considered ceremonial. A khopesh from the Hauran, south of Damascus, now in the Royal Ontario Museum, is blunt on every side, and the museum says it may not have been a practical weapon.
Stock for a khopesh
The originals were cast in bronze, not forged: Tutankhamun's khopesh in Cairo is a single piece of bronze, handle and all. So there is no old forging practice to copy, and you are turning a cast shape into a forged one. Modern steel khopeshes are mostly forged from spring steel. Everest Forge in Nepal, for one, forges its khopeshes from 5160 leaf spring and lists its 20 in model with a full-tang handle and a blade of about 998 g.
| Slim, 1 in wide | 1 1/4 × 1/4 in |
|---|---|
| Standard, 18 in blade, 1 7/8 in wide | 2 × 1/4 in |
| Lighter, 3/16 in spine | 2 × 3/16 in |
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
Questions
How much steel do I need for a khopesh?
For an 18 in blade with a 5 in full tang, forged, about 17 1/2 in of 2 × 1/4 in bar: around 40 oz of steel for an estimated 28 oz finished blade. You get one blade from an 18 in bar and two from a 36 in bar. At the calculator's starting price for 1084 that is about $36 of steel a blade; type in what your supplier charges.
Which side of a khopesh is sharp?
The outside of the curve. The Royal Ontario Museum notes that although these were long called sickle swords, they are sharp on the convex side and never on the concave side the way a sickle is. Grind your edge on the outer curve of the hook.
Free: the one-page stock size chart
Bar sizes for ten common knife patterns, weight per inch for the common flat-bar sizes, and quick heat-treat numbers for the usual carbon steels. Print it, tape it to the grinder.