New Gallery Available - "Knife Makers of Laos"

Knife Maker, Ban Hat Hien LPDR

I have finally have caught up on the editing and post processing of my photographs from the past three months.  I am not complaining because having so many photographs to work on indicates that there have been many interesting experiences during that time period.

There have been two funerals, an elementary school field day, rice harvesting, rice threshing, reunions with old friends, reunions with family, and some travels - all milestones for us as time passes.

One of our travels was to the Lao People's Democratic Republic ("Laos" or "LPDR").  We went to Luang Prabang as a respite from the emotional environment created by the death of Duang's father. It was a relief to get away from all the commotion back in Tahsang Village.

One of our destinations in Laos, was to revisit the knife makers of Ban Hat Hien, a small village across the road from the Luang Prabang International Airport.  Three years ago we had watched knives being created by the villagers out of recycled motor vehicle suspension leaf springs.

During this trip we also visited a Khmu village in the highlands outside of Luang Prabang where we encountered a 90 year old blacksmith making knives.

A new photo gallery of photographs on my photography website, documenting the knife making, is now available at the link below

http://www.hale-worldphotography.com/Laos/Knife-Makers-of-Laos/36637899_hmCg4d

Knife Makers of the LPDR

Khmu Knife Maker In the Highlands Near Luang Prabang

I enjoy witnessing and documenting handicrafts by the local peoples of Southeast Asia.  This affinity for appreciating and being fascinated by people making things for their everyday life stems back many years to when I was a child.  Our family for many years had a garden that supplied the kitchen with fresh vegetables.  In the Fall my mother would can tomatoes, and pickles.  Best of all we would scour the countryside for wild grapes that we would pick and my mother would magically turn into paraffin topped jars of exquisite grape jelly that would last until the next Fall.

In Southeast Asia there are still countless opportunities to experience people making do for themselves, their family, and their neighbors.  Depending upon the time of season there is rice planting, rice harvesting, peanut planting, peanut harvesting, cotton weaving, saht weaving, silk weaving, sugar cane planting, sugar cane harvesting, butchering of animals, weaving of fishing nets, fishing, making ethnic treats over outdoor charcoal fires, building gunpowder rockets, and many other interesting activities that help to definite the local cultures.

As a child back in Connecticut, we often went on field trips as part of a family outing or as part of a school class.  Two places that we went to often were Mystic Seaport and Old Sturbridge Village.  Mystic Seaport focuses on the New England whaling industry of the 18th and 19th century while Old Sturbridge Village deals with 18th and 19th century rural New England life.

Both the Seaport and the Village are living museums with people performing tasks and using the resources as well as the techniques available to our ancestors during the period that the museums focus upon.

Mystic Seaport Blacksmith Making Lantern Brackets

One of my favorite living exhibits at both of the museums was the blacksmiths.  The blacksmiths at Old Sturbridge Village were typically occupied making nails.  The blacksmiths at Mystic Seaport, if you were fortunate, would be making a harpoon head.  If you were not so fortunate they would be making brackets or hinges for ships.

I first encountered knife making in Southeast Asia in 2010 during our trip to Luang Namtha, Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR).  We ended up visiting many ethnic villages in the surrounding area.  One village that we visited was a Khmu village, Baan Sopsim, where several men were working together making knives.

That experience was a subject of a previous blog:

http://hale-worldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/02/village-blacksmiths-laos-day-3.html

Knife Making In Baan Sopsim

On our second trip to the former royal capital of Laos, Luang Prabang, we went out to a village, Ban Hat Hien, renowned for the resident's metalworking skills.  We witnessed knives being made out of recycled leaf springs from the suspensions of motor vehicles.

Once again our experience there was the subject of another blog entry:

http://hale-worldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/12/baan-hat-hien-blacksmith-village.html

Ban Hat Hien Knife Makers

On our last trip to LPDR in December 2013, we wanted to return to Baan Hat Hien to watch the people make knives out of the recycled steel.  On the morning of our second day in Luang Prabang, we drove out to Baan Hat Hien which is located next to the Luang Prabang International Airport.

We got out of our rented tuk tuk, a very small pick up truck - perhaps 1/2 ton capacity with very small wheels, and started to walk around the village.  Many things had changed.  There were more houses in the village than during our last visit three years ago.  Some of the wood, bamboo, and thatched houses had been upgraded to cinder block and corrugated metal houses.  The location where we first encountered knife making in the village was gone - replaced by a house.  The village square area was now filled with houses.  However as we walked along the road towards the village Vat we encountered a familiar sight - a man and his wife still banging together ... banging glowing bright yellow steel on the same makeshift anvil that they were three years ago to produce knives.  Their metal working operation in the front yard of their hoe along the village dirt road had not changed a bit.

After three years, still banging away, together

The man and his wife recognized us - I suspect that they don't get many foreign visitors who spend an hour with them, talking and taking photographs.

Wife tends to heating steel in a charcoal forced draft furnace(?)

Over the past three years, the division of labor between the husband and wife team had not changed.  The wife was responsible for heating the steel.  Her duties included tending to the charcoal fire that was utilized to heat the steel to a near white temperature.  She added bits of charcoal as required to keep the fire going and she turned on and off the small electrical fan that blew air underneath the fire to keep the fire hot enough for heating the steel. She held the shaped steel in the fire with long metal tongs.  With the same tongs, she quickly transferred the heated metal to the makeshift anvil located within arm's distance to her.  She held the heated, but quickly cooling, steel over the anvil as her husband banged on it to further shape it and commence to put an edge on what was to become a large heavy knife.  In concert with her husband and without any verbal communication she would move and turn the knife blank to facilitate the shaping process.

Shaping the knife blank

The steel cooled quickly from almost white to a bright yellow, on to a dull yellow, a bright red, to a cherry red, then on to dull red followed by a grey color.  When the steel got close to the grey color, the husband took over holding the knife blank and hitting it with the hammer while his wife pivoted to place another blank in the fire to heat up.  By the time the husband had completed his fine adjustments to the cooling steel shape, another piece of steel was hot enough for forging by the team.

Completed knife blanks were cooled, water quenched, in a tub of water between the husband and wife.  This process "freezes" the metallurgical structure of the steel so that it has acceptable properties for a knife.

Periodically the team would heat the up to then, neglected ends, of the knife.  Using long metal tongs, the husband would burn the hot end of the knife into prepared pieces of bamboo that became the handles for the knives.  This generated a great deal of smoke as the hot metal burned and also created steam as it penetrated the bamboo.

Burning A Bamboo Handle On To A Knife

After about half an hour, we left and moved on along the village road.  We walked towards the sounds of metal being forged and shortly came upon another family knife making enterprise.

As steel is  heated in the background, a young man grinds an edge on to a knife

This was a fairly large enterprise with about six people, not counting the children and their mothers who were watching close by - sometimes too close, involved in the metal working process.  There were also some family members next door involved in producing the charcoal that will be used in the fires to heat steel.

Mother and daughter working to make charcoal

I don't know exactly how many people were actually working to produce the charcoal.  There was a woman and her grown up daughter who were working their butts off - hauling wood up the hill, splitting the logs in two or four depending upon their size, and loading the split wood over a fire pit as part of the process to make charcoal.  Making charcoal, to simplify the process and explanation, is essentially baking wood.  Baking wood in an oxygen deficient atmosphere drives out the volatiles from the wood leaving behind carbon (char) that burns at the higher temperatures that are required to work steel.

A wife splitting log to be used to produce charcoal

There was an older man watching over the two women who were working so hard.

I did not see him working.  Through Duang I asked him why he was not working.  He replied that he was too old to work but that his young wife and his daughter were good workers.  I then asked him what I could do to get my wife to work so hard because my young wife does not work like that and I am too old too.  We all had a very good laugh except for his young grandson who was not all that thrilled to see a "falang" (white foreigner).

Splitting logs - Khmu style

Unfortunately for the little boy, we were around for a good while.  Duang had made a deal with the next door knife makers to buy a knife - a special knife.  She agreed to buy a good knife that could cut bone.  I expressed concern about a knife that could cut my bones to everyone's amusement.  Duang assured me that she would not cut my bone with the knife.  She said that if I were to be a "naughty boy" she would use the knife to cut something else on me that has no bone in it!  Everyone roared with laughter ... including me after feigning fear.  Everywhere we go in Thailand and Lao, the people enjoy and are ready for a good laugh.  Seldom do we leave them wanting.  It makes for a good time for all, gets everyone to relax and to be happy.  It often makes for better photographs too.  Oh - the other special thing about the knife was that we got to watch the people make Duang's knife from the very start.  The price of Duang's special knife - roughly $7.00 USD cash.  The cost of watching it being made from a piece of recycled steel - a few laughs mainly at my expense.  The price of spending some quality time with the knife makers of Ban Hat Hien - priceless

Making Duang's "Special Knife"

Our adventures into knife making in Lao was not over for this trip quite yet.  The next day we spent in the highlands overlooking Luang Prabang.  It was a day of unexplored territory and people for us.  It was a great day spent at Lao, Khmu, and Hmong villages.

At the first Khmu villages that we stopped at we came upon an old man making knives in his forge attached to back of his house.

Old Khmu Blacksmith

Working by himself he was producing knives like we had seen down in the valley.  These knives are all purpose utility knives.  They are used for butchering animals, harvesting sugar cane, food preparation, cutting firewood, and collecting food stuffs from the surrounding forest.  You will frequently see people of just about all ages with both a woven basket and one of these knives strapped to their backs.

There is a legion about Icarus who flew to close to the Sun which melted his wings resulting in him plunging into the sea and drowning.  The good blacksmith of the village did not get too close to the Sun but there is evidence that he has gotten too close to the fire.  Unlike Icarus the blacksmith has not perished, in fact he has thrived to be 90 years old.  The effect of his getting too close to the fire is that a portion of the plastic frames of his glasses have melted and deformed.

Our encounters with knife makers was concluded for that trip.  It had been very informative as well as entertaining.

I returned to Thailand once again with an appreciation and admiration how the people of this region are able to make do with what they have available to them.  The ability to fashion a living from their environment for me is an inspiration.  It is also testament to their self sufficiency.

Children Being ...

A Laughing Lao

One of the simple pleasures that Duang and I enjoy here in Isaan is observing the many small children that we encounter in the villages.

As soon as they are born, babies spend a great deal of time outside.  If they are not being held by their mother, grandmother or even great grandmother, babies are being rocked in hammocks suspended from the log columns of the thatched roofed elevated platforms that just about every home has in their front yard close to the narrow street.

Just about every passerby stops by to spend some time gossiping, eating, drinking and of course paying attention to the babies.  School children hustling along the village streets on their way home from school, stop by to play with the babies.  Babies develop surrounded by people of all ages.  Babies develop surrounded by the sights and sounds of an extended  family as well as community.

Once the babies are able to walk, their social circle widens greatly.  The toddlers are left to their own devices and although watched over by elders and perhaps older siblings, they are free to roam about the yard.  It is at this time that they start spending their time outdoors making friends and learning to play with cousins and neighbors.  If other children of their age are not available, there are always village dogs and chickens to occupy their attention.

By the time a child is two to three years old they are fairly well independent.  The entire village is their play yard.  They spend the daylight hours outside playing in the dirt, playing with bicycles, playing with rocks and sticks.  Puddles and mud are especially attractive to these toddlers.  You will come upon small groups of these children throughout the village - groups of focused, determined, confident, and vocal little people.

Khmu Children Interrupt Their Play to Watch the Visiting Foreigners

Our visits to Lao Peoples Democratic Republic are no exception - throughout Laos we find many groups of children playing and starting out on their life journeys.  On our last trip to the villages outside of Luang Prabang, Duang remarked at least twice that there were "many students (children) in the village, not have good, TV too much boom boom"  I suspect that the lack of quality television as well as the long and cold nights in the dry season does contribute to the large number of children.  Another factor is the demographics of the populations.  Thailand and Laos, as well as all of the other ASEAN countries are much younger populations than the USA.

Lao Children Huddle Over A Charcoal Fire at the Village Store

In the Lao Loum village of Xiang Muak or Ban Xiang Muark or Ban Xiang -Nouak (just as in Thailand the spelling of the native language villages and streets can vary and is subject to a great deal of interpretations), we encountered a small mixed group of heavily dressed children huddled around a small charcoal fire on the porch of the local market.  The children were bundled up and huddled around to escape the cold of the highland morning.  The children were as interested in us as we were in them.  We engaged in small talk with them for quite a while. The nine year old girl, the most outwardly member of the group, pulled a tuber out of the ashes of their fire, peeled it and gave it to me to eat.  It was a taro root and tasted similar to a sweet potato.  It is always rewarding for us to be able to bring some of the outside world to people especially children.  It does not escape us that as much as we are learning about the lives of the local people we are also teaching them about our life - a situation that we take very seriously.

Big Brother Watches Over His Little Brother

In another village we encountered two young brothers waiting as their young mother prepared food on the thatched roofed porch of their woven bamboo home.

AYoung Mother Prepares Food For Her Family

The home was a very humble abode - woven bamboo walls which allowed plenty of drafts in the home, a corrugated metal roof with an attached covered platform for preparing food and taking care of babies. As their mother cooked food over a charcoal stove, a gallon sized cement lined vessel, the baby played in his hand made crib suspended from the beams of the patio while his older brother divided his attention between his younger brother and his nearby mother.  I approached the home to speak with the children and to take some photographs.  Rather than being suspicious and perhaps apprehensive over a stranger approaching her home, the young mother was very welcoming.  This is a typical reaction here in southeast Asia, the people are extremely friendly and hospitable.  There are some hill tribes that are shy about being photographed so it is best, and always polite to ask permission first.

The children and their mother were dressed in heavy clothing to ward off the chill of the highland morning.  I suspect that the temperature was around 18C (65F) and the morning fog had just burned off.  Sixty-five degrees may seem a heat wave for early December in may Northern climes but hypothermia can be caused in elderly and babies overnight in a 60F house.  Drafts and moisture increase the risk of hypothermia.  In Thailand the government donates thousands of blankets every year that are distributed by the Royal Thai Army in the highlands to assist the people to survive the cold season.

Visiting and talking with the young mother brought back memories for Duang when she was a young child living in a woven bamboo house without much food.  Upon leaving the family, Duang gave some money to the mother.  I have always been impressed with Duang's compassion and her generosity continues.

Young Boy "Helps" His Father Make A Knife

In another part of the village we spent quite a bit of time with some knife makers.  The situation developed that one of the knife makers ended up making a knife specifically for Duang.  It was a great opportunity for me to photograph the entire process of producing a knife from recycled leaf springs of motor vehicles.  I had photographed knife making in the Luang Prabang area three years earlier and in the Luang Namtha area.  However just as in visiting the same location more than once, photographing the process a third time allowed me to recognize the nuances and different details missed previously.  At this stop, I was entertained by the knife maker's son who hovered over his father and even interfered a couple times with his father's work.

The boy seemed to be torn between the curiosity about a strange man visiting his family's business and a naturally reservation about something completely foreign to him.  Standing by and over his father seemed to meet his needs - to learn and observe the foreigner up close but still be within the safety zone afforded by his father.

Khmu Boys

In a Khmu village we found a man busy making bird snares.  We saw children at play throughout the village.  Our presence in the village interrupted the play of some of the children.  Shortly after we arrived and set up taking photographs several little boys joined us.

Although they interrupted their play, one boy continued to chew on a piece of freshly cut sugar cane.  One of his friends was completely oblivious to the fact that he was completely naked from the waist down.  When I asked him where his pants were, he just smiled and laughed with no sign of embarrassment or care - just happy and content with his situation.

Two of the boys had been playing by rolling a motorcycle tire around the village much like I had read about children playing with hoops in the earlier days of America,  The tire that the boys were playing with did not have a rim or wheel.  No problem.  The villagers had bamboo.  You can do just about anything with bamboo - eat it, build scaffolding with it, make a raft with it, build furniture out of it, cook in it, build shelter with it, create lacquer ware with it, support bean plants with it, make ladders out of it, make bird snares out of it, make rat snares out of it and now I saw how it can be used to make a wheel.  The wheel could never be used on a bicycle, motorcycle, car , tuk-tuk or truck but the wheel was fit for the purpose of allowing a tire to be rolled around using a short piece of bamboo.

Pieces of bamboo had been cut to fit inside of the rubber tire and woven together to keep the tire round or at least round enough to roll along the dirt paths and dirt roads of the village.  Once again fit for purpose and the ingenuity of local peoples made the most of what was available to them.  I suspect that these children have never been and will never will be bored.  Imagination and practicality go far in meeting any one's needs.

Khmu Village Boys Playing Petanque

Village children in Southeast Asia are free.  They are, by and large, free to play amongst themselves without adult interference.  There are no organized and adult supervised youth soccer teams, no Little League Baseball Teams, no cheer leading teams, no CYO basketball leagues, no swim clubs, or even youth bowling leagues.  The children are free to pick their sports, their teams, officiate their own competitions.  There are no adults imposing their will and choices upon the children.  Most importantly there no adults interfering with the disputes that arise from competition as well as all the childhood issues that cause disputes.  The children have the freedom to resolve their own disputes.  They have the opportunities to learn the arts of negotiation and skills of compromise on their own and at their own pace.  They are empowered rather than coddled. At an early age they learn to solve their own problems.

What Some Children Have to Do To Go Outside to Play

I was first introduced to the French game of petanque when I lived in Algeria.  Just as Algeria, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (LPDR) was a French colony.  The French, besides bringing French cooking and French pastry to their colonies, they also introduced petanque.  Thailand, previously known as Siam, was never colonized by European powers.  However here in Isaan, people do play petanque undoubtedly another cultural connection to their Lao Loum cousins across the Mekong River in the LPDR.

Petanque is a team competition were a small ball is tossed down a a rectangular court usually compacted earth or sand but sometimes, especially in the case with children, a strip of ground as it exists.  Teams then take turns tossing heavy metal balls towards the small ball at the other end of the court.  The object is to get closest to the small ball.  You have a choice to make when you toss your ball down the court. You can flat out try to get your ball closest to the small ball or you can attempt to knock your opponent's ball away from the small ball so that one of your team's balls becomes closest. One point is earned for each completed round.  The match ends after 10 minutes with the winning team being the one with the most points.  In the case of children without watches they just play until they get bored.

In the adjacent village, a Hmong village, we discovered some children, boys and girls, playing what appeared to be a game of war.  A game with picking up logs, throwing them, running to them to throw them again all the while yelling.

Hmong Boys Playing Spinning Tops

Further into the village we found our third group of the day playing with spinning tops. Tujlub is a game where a heavy wood top is set to spinning people then take turns tossing their spinning tops trying to knock out the original top and cease its spinning.  Often children play a variation where they just toss their spinning top at the center of a circle and watch the collisions.

The top are home made carved solid pieces of heavy wood.  The free end of plastic strapping is wrapped around the top.  The other end of the plastic strapping is tied to the end of a stick.  The top is tossed out and as it flies through the air the stick is jerked in the opposite direction to impart a spin to the top.  I tried it once an failed miserably much to the amusement of the onlooking children.

Letting the top fly and spin

As we sat in the back of our hired tuk-tuk bouncing along the dirt road on our way back to Lunag Prabang, we were both very pleased to have witnessed so many children ... so many children being children.  These were confident and independent children preparing for their adult lives.

The greatest gift that parents can give their children can not be purchased.  The gift is not shielding them from the challenges of life or the realities of life. The gift is to empower their children to be confident, to allow them to make mistakes, to allow them to solve their own problems ... to let them be children.

Baan Hat Hien - Blacksmith Village



Baan Hat Hien Blacksmiths Forging A Cane Knife

 Since we had rented a Tuk-Tuk along with a driver during our trip to Lunag Prabang, Laos we had the freedom as well as flexibility to do some sightseeing outside of Luang Prabang proper.  As part of my research for our second trip to the area I determined that visits to three villages would be interesting.


Baan Hat Hien, "Blacksmith Village" Lao People's Democratic Republic

One of the villages that I wanted to visit was "Baan Hat Hien" which is also referred to as "Blacksmith Village".  According to my research on the Internet Baan Hat Hien is well known for making knives out of reclaimed American artillery shells and other war materials.  America's not so secret, "Secret War", in Laos ended 35 years ago and even though Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world, the amount of available war material has apparently diminished greatly.  During our visit to the village which included three homes where blacksmitting was being performed, we did not observe any brass or bomb materials.  The Baan Hat Hien blacksmiths were creating knives and machetes out of recycled steel - high grade steel from leaf springs of Tuk-Tuks and Somlaws.  Although the amount of material from the war now available for forging into knives has diminished, the threat to the Lao people from the wars remains a real concern and danger.  During our visit we saw Lao government vehicles associated with their campaign to rid the country of unexploded ordinance.

Today the blacksmiths purchase leaf springs from the suspensions of Tuk-Tuks and Somlaws from scrap metal dealers from Vientiane for 6,000 KIP ($0.75 USD) a kilogram ($0.16 USD per pound).  The blackmiths disassemble the leaf springs and cut them into the proper length.  They use their forge to heat the steel in order to cut the steel with a hammer and chisel.  I did not see any oxy-acetylene cutting torches in the village.  Oxy-acetylene cutting torches use compressed bottles of oxygen and compressed bottles of acetylene to fuel a hot flame to cut steel.  I suspect that both the cost and the lack of availability of the gases preclude their use in Baan Hat Hien.  The blacksmiths of Baan Hat Hien heat their steel in small charcoal fires.  Charcoal is a local product and cheap.



A Typical Forge in Baan Hat Hien

I didn't count the number of houses in the village, but I would guess that there were 10 to 15 houses.  From the blacksmiths I learned that there were 5 forges in the village.  Five forges?  Actually there were five homes where the family forged knives over a very small charcoal fire in the front yard of the home.  Typically the 6 inch diameter fire was contained in a rough furnace built with a few bricks and supplemented with a forced draft fan.  Everything was fit for purpose and from readily available cheap materials.  The forced draft fans are small blowers that appear to be recycled truck defroster, heater, or A/C fans.  Air from the fan was sent by a metal tube to discharge beneath the coals of the fire.



 As is typical in these cottage industry facilities and many homes the electrical system was very primitive and suspect.  Electrical cable ran unprotected along the ground from a very small junction box on a post or pole to the blower.  I did not see any protective measures such as metal conduit or a GFI (Ground Fault Interrupter).  If there is one thing that concerns me more than being involved in a traffic accident over here, it is having some sort of electrical accident.  My concerns are in general not shared by the local people.




A Husband and Wife Work Together In Front of Their Home

The people working with the hot steel wore no personal protection equipment.  Due to the heat of the day and from the forge, they wore cotton tee shirts and cotton shorts.  None of the workers wore gloves even though they were handling hot metal.  None of the workers had safety boots.  The workers were barefoot or wore their everyday rubber flip flops.  I never saw a pair of safety glasses despite the various activities that could injure the worker's eyes.  If any type of head wear was worn it was a simple baseball style cotton cap.  Despite the soot from the charcoal fire none of the workers wore a dust mask or anything else over their nose and mouth.  Although the workers were handling yellow hot steel and striking the hot steel with heavy hammers causing sparks to fly and undoubtedly small pieces of hot metal, the workers did not wear any "leathers".  I grinned to myself thinking of the heart attack any of the safety men that I had worked with in the past would have had upon inspecting these work sites.  We were witnessing a cottage industry no doubt very much like those operating in Europe or America in the mid 19th century.  The blacksmiths do not go to school to learn metallurgy or manufacturing techniques.  The ones that we spoke to were taught their craft by their fathers.  The workers were masters as well as slaves to their trade.  They pretty much controlled the entire process and means of production.  However, if they didn't produce they did not earn any money.




Two Workers Beat On A Hot Steel Blank to be Forged Into A Cane Knife


The man and wife that we spent the most amount of time with start work at 8:00 A.M. and work 7 days a week until 5 or 6 P.M..  I suspect that their quitting time is more determined by available day light than any defined schedule.  Their product is purchased by a "big company" for 16,000 KIP a cane knife ($2.00 USD) which the company then distributes and sells for $4 USD.  The blacksmith team can make 10 knives a day.  In comparison Lao field workers make $2.67 USD a day versus $20 USD for the blacksmith and his wife.

A Worker Inserts A Hot Blank Into A Bamboo Handle That is Being Prepared


At two of the forges, wives worked with their husbands to produce cane cutting knives.  The women tended to heating the steel in the fire.  They also took the hot semi finished knives from their husbands and shoved the blanks into prepared pieces of bamboo.  Bamboo is a type of grass.  It is hollow but at intervals there is a diaphragm that closes off the interior of the bamboo.  These periodic internal bracing gives the bamboo plant strength and rigidity. The prepared pieces of dried bamboo were cut so that one of the internal diaphragms was close to one end and far from the other end. As the narrow tapered end of the hot knife entered into the hollow bamboo at the long end it eventually burned through the internal diaphragm at the far short end thus creating a good mechanical connection once the blade is completed.  When the blade has been completed the blade is reinserted into the bamboo handle and the void filled with an epoxy.  The day that we visited the women were only burning the internal slot into the handle and removed the still hot blade to complete cooling on the ground.  The handles were set off to the side for use at a later time.

Baan Hat Hien Knives For Sale - We bought one of the antler handle knives

In addition to cane cutting knives, the blacksmiths of Baan Hat Hien produce smaller hand knives.  These knives are presented with a great deal of pride and available for purchase directly from the blacksmiths.  We ended up buying a knife with a simple etched bamboo handle for 50,000 KIP ($6.25 USD).  A short while later we wee presented with some other knives for consideration.  Two of the knives had antler handles.  We ended up purchasing one of them for the same $6.25 price.  We like to purchase local handicrafts on our various travels.  It is a way to support and encourage local crafts and make wonderful souvenirs as well.




Handcrafted Knives with Bamboo Handles

 We spent about an hour at the village and learned a great deal about knife making but more importantly about the people's life.

Once again I was impressed and in awe of people making do with what was available to them.  The people were able to survive with little outside involvement or perhaps more importantly without outside interference.

It is these triumphs of the individual and cultural adaptations that I enjoy witnessing and documenting.

It is crafts, skills, and traditions like these that make up the heritage of mankind.  They are priceless gifts for the future and inspirations for today.