A cowboy bowie, 1065 and stag.

This one goes on my instant favorites from you!

What a great looking bowie!
 
Mighty nice. Not your "norm" from what I've seen Salem, but my gosh you nailed it. [emoji1474][emoji106]❤️. Dozier


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it works for me!
 
Salem Straub said:
Thanks for the comments folks! Bladescout, probably what is bending your eye has to do with the rather short ricasso- that's sort of a personal style with me, over the years I've held less and less affection for a lengthy ricasso. Hell, I've done away with them completely on my new series of line chefs. Some amazing makers are the opposite, for instance JD Smith and Kevin Klein seem to really like to stretch them! Everyone's Iron Mistress looks a little different, I suppose...
Click to expand...

Many still think that "The Golden Mean" should determine the ricasso length though shorter ones has come into vogue recently. I'm kind of old & set in my ways so mine are still what they were years ago.

BTW: Why 1065? I've not used it so tell me about it. I've always used a hypereutectoid steel.

Gary
 
Ricasso length is an interesting subject. To me, unless it will be used to place a forefinger on, it serves largely only as a flat spot for a maker's mark. I have heard that knives with ricassos became more common as knives were made production style- it makes manufacture more convenient. I can certainly see how that would be. The other consideration is one of aesthetics. when I look at my older work, for sure some of that stuff has length in the ricasso. Perhaps it was when making everyday using knives that I came to change in that respect. I like the idea of maximizing blade length, especially in a hunter or skinner. With integral kitchen knives, the heel is best IMO when dropping right from the bolster. Better leverage, and looks good. A similar point is how my bolsters have gotten shorter. On my other active thread here, a member posted that to him the bolsters could be shorter. I had to laugh, as I totally think that's true. The set was designed to accentuate the wa style of the bolster, by affecting common proportions found in non-integral wa bolsters. Unless I have something to showcase in the bolster area, such as a cool piece of mosaic or something, I like to keep them short- more like 3/8" or so. What I call a "stingy bolster." Keeps weight down. That's another aspect of the ricasso in design- the shorter it is, the less weight it adds.
Anyway, enough of those ramblings from me!

As for the 1065, I have a lot of it. I wanted to keep the cost down, as this is a local customer. I happened to have had the stag on hand for quite some time. This fella will be using the knife for this and that, hopefully not getting into any fights with it, though... I wanted to make the blade out of a tough steel, 1065 is certainly that and I accentuated that characteristic by thoroughly spring tempering the spine. It's a classic carbon steel as far as I'm concerned. Also, it is quite a reasonable steel as far as hand sanding goes- again, allowing me to keep the cost down for my friend.

Thanks for the thoughtful observations, Gary!
 
This is a beautiful looking Bowie, clean, precise and immaculately finished. A pleasure to look at and even more so to own.
 
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