This story started about 2 years ago. Back then I was drooling for a while over pictures of Bailey's work posted here and on dealer sites. There had been chances to buy his knives, but I had put restrictions on myself on how much I could spend per knife. The imposed limit was partly due to my being fairly new to custom knife collecting and I felt I needed to learn before putting down what for me would be big bucks. But I'd reached a stage where I was starting to be able to control my impulses, not buying so many lower quality pieces but instead saving my money for a few higher quality ones so that in the end the amount spent is the same.
At a convergent time when I had some money saved from controlling my knife buying and when I was going through a phase of being enamored with curved blades, Bailey posted a photo of this Persian style bladed bowie that he just finished. So I contacted Bailey to see if the knife was for sale and pulled the trigger upon finding it was:
The accolades heaped on Bailey are deserved, so I won't bore you with my gushing about the knife once I got it. But there were a couple of things that bothered me about it. First was the lack of a guard. Now that didn't bother me in the photo or in concept because I'm quite used to working with puukkos, kitchen utility knives, and cheap machetes, all of which have no guards. But the wide end of the handle on Bailey's knife made me feel like my hand would slide toward the blade. Though honestly it was unlikely that I'd actually use the knife, we all know that we'd like to have our collection pieces constructed as if we would. The second thing that I wasn't totally happy with was the damascus bolster. I know some of you will gnash your teeth at this, but I have a general dislike of damascus. I bought the knife despite the damascus bolster because I liked how everything else looked. These two things were a small matter at first, but they nagged at me over the course of near a year. Then RogerP showed us all a picture of a bowie/hunter set that Bailey made for him. That inspired and made me decide to order a matching set for mine, and I thought as long as Bailey was going to do that I might as well get him to change the bolster on my bowie to a blued singled guard (I dislike double guards too, so continue to gnash your teeth).
The result of that order one year later is this threesome of camp, hunter, and bird & trout. My picture taking skills are sorely lacking so this is the best I was able to accomplish and it doesn't do Bailey's work justice. There are faint hamons on all three knives. In the above picture of the original Persian you might be able to see part of its hamon. The camp knife now seems to lock itself in my hand with the guard in front and the wide butt. The hunter is among my favorite hunters, which is saying alot for me since most of my collection centers around hunters. And the b&t just melts in my hand and ended up better than I could have expected.
Camp: 9-3/4" blade of W-2 steel, 14-1/2" overall. Madrou burl handle.
Hunter: 4-5/8" blade, 9" overall.
Bird & Trout: 3" blade, 7" overall.
At a convergent time when I had some money saved from controlling my knife buying and when I was going through a phase of being enamored with curved blades, Bailey posted a photo of this Persian style bladed bowie that he just finished. So I contacted Bailey to see if the knife was for sale and pulled the trigger upon finding it was:
The accolades heaped on Bailey are deserved, so I won't bore you with my gushing about the knife once I got it. But there were a couple of things that bothered me about it. First was the lack of a guard. Now that didn't bother me in the photo or in concept because I'm quite used to working with puukkos, kitchen utility knives, and cheap machetes, all of which have no guards. But the wide end of the handle on Bailey's knife made me feel like my hand would slide toward the blade. Though honestly it was unlikely that I'd actually use the knife, we all know that we'd like to have our collection pieces constructed as if we would. The second thing that I wasn't totally happy with was the damascus bolster. I know some of you will gnash your teeth at this, but I have a general dislike of damascus. I bought the knife despite the damascus bolster because I liked how everything else looked. These two things were a small matter at first, but they nagged at me over the course of near a year. Then RogerP showed us all a picture of a bowie/hunter set that Bailey made for him. That inspired and made me decide to order a matching set for mine, and I thought as long as Bailey was going to do that I might as well get him to change the bolster on my bowie to a blued singled guard (I dislike double guards too, so continue to gnash your teeth).
The result of that order one year later is this threesome of camp, hunter, and bird & trout. My picture taking skills are sorely lacking so this is the best I was able to accomplish and it doesn't do Bailey's work justice. There are faint hamons on all three knives. In the above picture of the original Persian you might be able to see part of its hamon. The camp knife now seems to lock itself in my hand with the guard in front and the wide butt. The hunter is among my favorite hunters, which is saying alot for me since most of my collection centers around hunters. And the b&t just melts in my hand and ended up better than I could have expected.
Camp: 9-3/4" blade of W-2 steel, 14-1/2" overall. Madrou burl handle.
Hunter: 4-5/8" blade, 9" overall.
Bird & Trout: 3" blade, 7" overall.
