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

I'll take it...
PM me with the price?

The Redlands was a pretty rough area. Especially in the days of flintlock pistols. Sometimes click-wosh was all you got! Then down to nut-cuttin’

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. Think I’ll keep it a while longer!

The Redlands was one of them places that Spain (early on) and the US almost went to war over. Not because either side wanted the territory, but because one side was telling the other they HAD to take it or else! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

johnw;
Good morning to you sir, thanks for the reply.

When we left the farm in '84 the bench belt grinder stayed in the shop so most of my knife making after that was with a rotary disc type sander. While that works after a fashion, it's not optimum truly and I've been meaning to either make or buy something like a 2"x72" belt grinder so I can work with a bunch of the Simmonds D2 planer blades a retired planerman from the now closed Weyerhaeuser sawmill gifted me.

The blades you asked about are just drop point shapes I fooled with to see what worked and what didn't for whatever I was trying to build back then. I used a bunch of tool and die steel in those days as that's what we had, as well as whatever steel threw enough long tailed carbon rich sparks when I tested it. My heat treating was by guess and by eye which sometimes made for a decent edge holding blade and sometimes did not... at all.

Where we farmed in Saskatchewan was - in those days - fairly good whitetail country so we usually had a nice stack of drop offs to use for whatever projects needed antler handles. We used to pay my brother's sons to go out looking for them as they'd absolutely wreck a tractor tire if you ran over it wrong.

Speaking of handle material I've got a couple fairly big chunks of mammoth ivory bark kindly given to me by a buddy who works in the Yukon, sitting on a shelf that need to become knife scales, so truly I need to get to making a few blades up for that too.

But then there's a Stutzen stock I started for our daughter at least 5 years back that should be completed first...

Funny how as we age we have an increasing number of projects and a shrinking amount of time.

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

Here is another alleged quote by Rezin Bowie. "Once't they got to walkin' on their guts, the fight was over."

I read that one many years ago in an old Gun Digest article about Bowie knives. I can;t remember the Gun Digest edition.

L.W.

Right? If I had two bullets left, facing a knife armed adversary, and I missed him with the first of the two shots, I’d probably use the last one on myself instead of engaging in a knife fight. Lol.

Leanwolf. I believe that is closer to the actual quote than how I wrote it. 👍🤣

Interesting. Then it’s a very deliberate imitation of the Puma Bowie.

Flave/Dave/Clark/ Duane...

How do a I do a hashbrown tag for disappointment?

Same question to Kaywoodie...

two of mine are.

Mr. Harry;
Morning again sir, well afternoon for you now I see.

For sure I believe that whenever it was made back in the day it was meant to look as close as possible to a Puma.

Here's a net photo of a Puma Sportsman's Bowie for reference.



The location of the lanyard or sheath retention strap hole is different for sure, but otherwise it does look close.

When I traded into it, the information was that it came from "a guy older than me who'd had it forever".

It's hard to say when the Puma sheath came along, but it is set up for the hole placement on a Puma so it's likely a real Puma sheath from back in the day.

I recall that a cousin had Solingen made Bowie with another smaller knife in the same sheath, but held below and in front of it. Here's more or less what it looked life - as I recall nearly 50 years later.



Anyways it's been an interesting topic for me. Thanks kindly for the replies as it's made me think and has brought up some pleasant memories that would not have otherwise come up on a soggy Sunday.

All the best.

Dwayne

johnw;
Well sir, in the best Canadian manners I'm able to display, I'll apologize sincerely for any disappointment I've caused you.

That said, I'd suggest that perhaps it's a Canadian trait to be disappointing?

I'm disappointed with my fellow Canucks quite often...

All the best regardless.

Dwayne

If I could go back in time and offer ol' Jim Bowie my chef's knife, he'd cream his pants.

Just as an aside, we see in the movies made about the Rocky Mountain fur trappers (mountain men) the characters always carry large Bowie knives. From what I've read, they mainly carried "butcher" type knives made by I. Wilson of Sheffield, England. Firearms, Traps, & Tools of the MountainMen, by Carl P. Russell. University of New Mexico Press, © 1967, Alfred A. Knopf. N.Y.

The I. Wilson knives were shipped here by the dozens of thousands in wooden barrels, used not only in the Rockies by the mountain men, but in the kitchens by women all over the country. The mountain men also used then as trade goods to the Indians.

Here is a picture of a very old genuine I. Wilson knife of the type that would have been carried by the mountain men. It has been in my family's kitchens for at least 150 years, perhaps more. I just know it has been handed down multiple times until my mother gave it to me. She'd used it as long as I can remember. I sincerely doubt it was a "mountain man" knife as my mother's family, although very old, did not "go out to the mountains after beaver."

The bottom knife is another butcher knife from the 1930s. My mother used it often, also. Both are in my kitchen and work quite well..



I. Wilson mfg. stamp.



FWIW.

L.W.

He would have liked my Victorinox butcher's knife, too

LW...

When I volunteer at the Alamo I carry two knives, an accurate custom-made replica of an 1830’s +L Sheffield England Trade Knife on my shooting bag, and a rather unspectacular but representative copy of an 1836-1839 Gravely and Wreaks English Bowie, itself a copy of an Arkansas James Black original at my waist.




I point out that the Gravely and Wreakes, replete with silver inlay in its original form, cost many times more than what a plain ol’ English trade knife did. I further point out that the trade knife was also of good steel, was lightweight, easy to carry and of a size and thickness well suited to the myriad daily tasks I might need it for.

The heavy and clumsy Bowie OTOH, was mostly designed to send a social message and for killing people, but poorly suited at best for things like dressing squirrels and making moccasins. Even a Jim Bowie didn’t get in that many knife fights, much less a guy like me, but if push came to shove if you stuck someone with a cheapo trade knife they still died.

I further point out that at 65, I was born in 1771 and so remember how cool us kids were in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s but all the stuff young guys do today (1836), like this whole Jim Bowie knife fad, is just dumb 🙂

In keeping with the theme - when looking at pictures of many of the Civil War soldiers, from both sides, they are often shown posed with large "Bowie" type knives. I suppose some of them may have been photographer's props but I have to believe that many of the soldiers carried "Bowie" type knives as a back-up weapon. I know that if I had to depend on a single shot rifle that was slow to reload I would feel better with a large knife of that type on my person.

I recall reading that there was a brisk business importing Sheffield manufactured "Bowie" knives prior to the civil war, if so they must have been more common than most folk suspect. But I can also see the common user being satisfied with a good Butcher style knife as pictured by LW, they were surely more available, inexpensive and would kill just as deadly as any Bowie style knife.

This is an interesting thread and the links are appreciated, lots of good information / history here from many knowledgeable folks - thanks to you all.

drover

Mike sometime back, might have been in the 1990's sometime, I was working at Hope, Arkansas and there were several men staying there that was attending a knife making class at Old Washington, supposedly in the same building that Black had His shop. Not sure but I think they made Old Washing a State Park, or at least some of it. It was also the State Capitol for a while during the Civil War. miles