Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Bowie Knife

Cool links Birdy...

https://www.smkw.com/bear-son-damascus-white-bone-bowie

This might be an option for a damascus.

I took a cheap USAF Survival knife and put a hybrid Scandi/Convex grind on it. It's like a razor.

"Ain’t nothing will take the fight out of a man quicker than him trippin’ over his own guts"

Attributed to Rezin Bowie.

Lol, actually that's pretty damn funny.

Cool read;

https://americansocietyofarmscollec...019/06/1992-B67-The-Story-of-a-Knife.pdf

The Shively-Perkins pictured in above article is another. As of late there are some researchers believe this may have been the type of knife that was used in the Sand Bar fight. There exists another article specific to this knife. Trying to locate it.

I would argue that his statement has a ring of truth in it....

Shively-Perkins custom made by Nathan Allen for Scott McMahon, site director at Presidio La Bahia Historic site.

Damn cool blade. Just a big azz butcher knife. Perkins was a US Dragoon officer. Shively the maker in Philadelphia. I believe it was Rezin Bowie who presented this blade to Perkins.

Would like to add the man who could tell us everything we wished to know on this subject was the late Bill Bagwell. He knew his Bowies!

I never bought a Bowie because I can't think of any use for one. We don't have any pigs to stick here. I have a couple large knives {Buck 120 and Ka-Bar} and find little to no practical use for them.

You ever do anything fun just for the Hell of it?

I don't like having a lot of junk around that doesn't get used.

Here's my Marble's Bowie. They are not the company they used to be, and this one is made in China, but it seems well made. I had a professional knife sharpener (A Korean gentleman who has a knife sharpening business in town) put a razor edge on it.

Damascus is for appearances.
Period.


Once upon a time, long long ago, the best steel made came from
Damascus. Without getting into the weeds, I was a lost process and
only a few folks "think" they have reproduced it.

That, was the Damascus steel of legend.
A great product, by very old standards.

Modern Damascus is two different color steels welded together
to show a pattern.

A steel manufacturer takes extreme caution to produce a product
that is uniform in composition, and formation. No inclusions, no voids,
Just uniform steel.

Someone then takes 2 different types of this uniform product,
and heats and beats them together. Hoping, they get every layer
welded solid over the entire length. Without any impurities mixed in.

If it goes well, it can be a great blade.
Probably as good as the better of the 2 steels used.

It may have a striking appearance, there are some awesome craftsmen
who do it very well. It's amazing how the create some of the patterns.

But, you aren't gaining performance.

In the past, some forge welding was done because hardenable steel
was expensive. So a small piece was welded to softer steel to make
a good, cheaper product. Also, heat treating wasn't as understood or
controllable. So soft steel was used to create a tough product that could
withstand impact type stresses, with hard steel incorporated to provide
a cutting edge. Axes are a good example of both reasons to forge weld
hard/soft tools.

Tks Bob, in my reading and browsing I hadn’t come across mention of Lucy Bowie and the Huber knife, nor of knives of designs intended to be issued to troops.

I expect I’ll get to see the infamous Musso Bowie when the new Alamo museum opens, the one that has been befuddling people for like sixty years now, it even made it into the 2004 Alamo movie....



https://www.knifemagazine.com/texas...-knives-slated-for-display-at-the-alamo/

Yeah that Musso is a hunk of steel.

Interesting to note how very different Mr Bagwell’s recommendations in a fighting knife (Bowie) were from that of Lt. Col. William Ewart Fairbairn of Fairbairn-Sykes fame.




Lt. Col. Fairbairn had apparently been in knife fights and even published an instructional booklet on where exactly to cut an opponent, used to be available online but IIRC since removed at the request of his descendants.

A friend gifted me a Cold Steel Natchez Bowie Fixed Blade Knife.

An impressive piece of iron.

I kept it for a few years... then sold it (with his blessings) and gave him the money.

I think I got him $500 for it.



A huge knife has it's place, but personally I prefer to carry a second G19 as a practical matter of function.

Don't read a Kaywoodie post and then go back to sleep.


I dreamt that me, Jim Bowie and Kaywoodie traveled to Sparta to sell the Spartans Bowie Knives and Bazooka bubble gum machines.

That was weird.

Bowies, oversimplified, seem to me to be oversized clip-points. For lack of a better or specific description. Intended to be a “fighting knife”.

That said, seems like a lot of somewhat smaller blades could fall under an umbrella of similar description, like a buck 119 for one. Maybe even a Puma skinner, based on some of the pics I’ve seen here.

I don’t buy knives for fighting, but clip points are my personal favorite for general use hunting and fishing applications, including both knives I just mentioned. My top two, always-on-my-belt, in the field models.

I love how I can do minute detail work with a razor clip point, from filleting bait fish to cleaning birds to skinning deer and popping bone joints, etc. So I don’t understand how some would call it a ‘useless’ design outside of fighting.

Just my take.

But I’m taking about a blade around 5” or a little less. I would think they get the “Bowie” label somewhere beginning around 7”. Or more. Like someone else called it - “a short sword”.