TIZWIN said:
I first started thinking about this grip while researching the history of the Bowie knife.
Settle down for a long story.
Jim Bowie had at least two Bowie knives.
The first knife corresponds to the knife he used at the Vidalia Sandbar Fight.
Jim Bowie's brother Rezin Bowie made this knife, or had it made on his plantation by his own blacksmith, and gave it to Jim Bowie as a gift.
What do we know about this knife?
The Rezin Bowie knife?
We have reason to believe Rezin Bowie intended for the user to hold it major edge up.
How do we know this, or why would we suspect it?
Rezin Bowie fought a bull with his own version of this knife, and in the process of this fight, Rezin's hand slid up the grip onto the blade and it almost severed his thumb.
How else would a blade's edge almost sever someone's thumb, unless one held the knife major edge up?
So, imagine a large, heavy Chef's knife with the top edge sharpened from the tip back to the grip; and, imagine the bottom edge thick like the typical spine of a knife, and with only the last half or third of the knife's bottom edge sharpened.
Further, please realize this knife has no separate hilt and relies instead on a "drop guard" to keep the user's hand from sliding up on it, as does a Chef's knife.
Think of an upside down Chef's knife, with the edge up and the drop guard down.
James Bowie had the mate to his brother Rezin's knife with him, the same knife he used at the Vidalia Sand Bar Fight, when he visited James Black, the Arkansas bladesmith.
James Black enjoyed some fame or notoriety for his steel and a "secret" heat treatment.
The steel, we think, had a high nickel content from a percentage of meteorite added to the steel.
In any event, Jim Bowie drew a design for James Black for a new fighting knife, and left the drawing with Black, promising to return in several weeks for the new fighting knife.
James Black didn't like James Bowie's design, and so he designed another knife.
He made both knives, James Bowie's design and his own James Black design.
When James Bowie returned to pay for the knife, James Black offered him either knife for the same price.
James Bowie chose James Black's design, and when James Bowie died at the Alamo he had James Black's Bowie Knife in his possession as THE Bowie Knife of fame.
Some historians think the Rezin Bowie knife of the Vidalia Sandbar Fight resembled the Chef's knife I have already described; and, they think the second knife might have looked very much like Bo Randall's Model 1 "All Purpose Fighting Knife."
Please check out this early Randall Model 1:
http://www.collectibleskingdom.com/springf.jpg
Notice it has a straight handle, with the center line of the handle aligned with the point of the knife.
Notice also the two rounded cutouts on the top and bottom of the ricasso.
Because of the knive's symmetry around the handle-point center line, a person could hold this knife either edge up or edge down, and it would balance the same.
However, not all modern Model 1's have a straight handle, but rather a dropping handle, so that the butt of the grip falls below the center line of the blade.
Check out this A. G. Russell offering:
http://www.agrussell.com/knives/tactical/randall_model_1_with_black_micarta_handle.html
That one looks straight.
Compare it to the one in Randall's present catalogue:
http://www.randallknives.com/catalog.php?action=modeldetail&id=25
I think "Bo" Randall designed this knife so the user could hold it edge up or edge down, with the index finger in front of the hilt, wrapped around the indentation in the Ricasso (either indentation, the one on the "top" or the "bottom").
Bo Randall's son, Gary, who now runs Randall Knives, denies this.
Still, I can't imagine why this knife would have these indentations in the ricasso except as place for the index finger in a desperation, don't want to lose the knife, fight.
Let me digress one more little bit.
Some years ago I had Buck 110 which I had thinned and sharpened to "silly sharp."
A friend and acquaintance of the time, a person I have reason to believe might have used a knife in a fight, criticized me for the fragility of my ultra-sharp knife: he said, "A knife should have an edge that can hit a belt buckle and stay sharp."
Hm.
So, let's consider a Bowie Knife, or a Randall Model 1, held edge up, with the index finger ahead of the hilt and wrapped around the ricasso, so that the hilt acts as a subhilt.
Additionally, imagine a knife 13.5" in total length, with a grip a hair over 5" in length (time and space won't let me explain why this length, but I think I have the right length).
Randall will make a Model 1 this large, but not larger, saying any extra length beyond an 8.5" blade slows down the blade in a fight.
A Bowie or Randall used as I have describe, with the edge up and the spine down, could parry another knife edge without concern for damaging one's own edge.
One could batter his opponent's blade aside with the spine held down.
Further, the sharpened clip would still serve in a long-reach slash, just as well, if not better, than the tip of a knife held the conventional way, major edge down.
Finally, one can put a knife held this way between the legs of his opponent and draw-cut upwards, severing the femoral artery and a few other things.
So, in this manner, one has a damage-resistant battering edge held down, with a sharpened swedge for slashing, and a razor-sharp edge held up, for an upward draw cut under the armpit, between the legs, behind the neck, behind the knee, etc.
NOW we get to the FSFK.
Fairbairn designed the Pattern 1, the first FSFK, with an unsharpened "tablet," as they called it, or an sharpened ricasso, as we would term it today.
After a wildly successful but limited run of Pattern 1 knives, the grinding men on the Wilkinson production floor complained to Wilkinson management about the unsharpened tablet, saying the tablet revealed and even exaggerated any lack of abosolute symmetry in the four grinds on the blade.
Look at the bottom picture of the very high-quality New Zealand knife on the following page:
http://www.nzknives.co.nz/pattern1.htm
A highly-skilled knife maker ground this blade, and had more time to do it than would a WWII factory worker.
Notice how the tablet exaggerates the tiniest amount of dyssymetry.
Wilkinson gave it factory grinding men permission to grind the edge all the way to the hilt, without consulting with Fairbairn.
Wilkinson named this knife the Pattern 2, which made the first knife the Pattern 1.
Years later, while instructing at CAMP X with the OSS, Fairbairn commissioned his second design, the X DAGGER.
http://webhome.idirect.com/~lhodgson/campx.htm
http://www.nzknives.co.nz/xdagger.htm
Notice that the X Dagger has an unsharpened ricasso, just like the Pattern 1 FSFK.
This means that the only two knives which Fairbairn designed both had an unsharpened ricasso.
Fairbairn already had access to as many Pattern 2 and Pattern 3 knives as he could have possible wanted.
Nonetheless, he designed a new knife which, like the Pattern 1, had an unsharpened ricasso.
In fact, the unsharpened ricasso represents the only real difference between the X Dagger and either Pattern 2 or the Pattern 3.
This tells me that the unsharpened ricasso had significant importance to Fairbairn.
Why and how?
Well, I looked at the Pattern 1 and the X Dagger, and looked at them and looked at them and looked at them...
And suddenly the Randall/Bowie knife popped into my head.
What if Fairbairn really intended the hilt to perform as a subhilt?
If so, it would have needed an unsharpened portion of the blade in front of the hilt for the index finger.
Follow my thinking?
Otherwise, why did he even design the X Dagger?
And why design it in a fashion that made it more difficult to manufacture, with an unsharpened ricasso?
In the end, only the unsharpened ricassos of the Pattern 1 and X Dagger distinguish them in any meaningful manner from the Pattern 2 and Pattern 3.
I could have it wrong, but the handle of the FSFK has always seemed too small for the adult male hand, unless one choked up on the grip and used the hilt as a subhilt.
Well, think about it.
I wrote this at the request of TIZWIN, and I thank him for asking me.
Later.
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