Bowie Knife (History)

joe90

joe90

Joined
Aug 17, 2001
Messages
346
Just been doing some background reading on the Bowie knife on wikipedia. In it there is a section that runs:

"... Bowie's original design but with a sharpened edge on the curved top edge of the blade..."

Which made me think. In all the Bowie knives that I have ever come across, I have never seen one with a sharpened edge on the curved top edge of the blade.

I find this very interesting.

Do you think this is a "sheeple" thing, or form vs function, or ... ?

Opinions / thoughts / impressions ???

Joe
 
Joe,

There are plenty of Bowie knives around with fully sharpened clip points. They are useful for delivering a backcut (martial arts), or simply to provide a secondary cutting edge (utility). No one know for sure what the original Bowie knife looked like; nor, does it really matter since bowie-like knives have been around throught most of history.

n2s
 
If you like bowie knives and Bowie history you should really pick up Norm Flayderman's book
bowiebook.gif

(knife by Bruce Evans)

Here is a modern remake of a Civil war artifact with a huge sharpened clip point
sbbwbks.jpg

(knife by Newt Livesay)
 
Ebtide,
Do you have an ISBN for the Flayderman Book???

Thanks,
Russ
 
In Stock Book Number?
Heck, just check amazon and put Flayderman in the search box...
That's what my wife did a few days before Christmas ;)

I've read bits & pieces.
Always get distracted by the photos.
The Civil War portraits are worth the price of admission.
 
Jim Bowie's knife has never been identified. There are a few models that are only believed to have been his. No one has any idea what the knife was like, except that it was large.
 
That's what I read - original Bowie never found...

Thanks for the book reference .. I'll definately be searching out that one! :D

Joe
 
Thanks guys.
Ordered the Flayderman book this AM.
Really looking foreward to seeing it.
 
International Standard Book Number. Almost all books have a unique ISBN printed in the UPC (bar code) box, but every once in a while you have to look in the copyright indicia.

My job requires me to enter about a hundred of 'em a day. :D
 
kaosu04 said:
Jim Bowie's knife has never been identified. There are a few models that are only believed to have been his. No one has any idea what the knife was like, except that it was large.
Click to expand...
Not true. Bowie #1 was made by James Black in Washington, Arkansas and is on display at the Historic Arkansas Museum:
http://www.arkansashistory.com/knife_gallery/

No one knows for sure, but by all accounts this was [one of?] Jim Bowie's knife [knives?].
 
Deep down inside I think that ol' Jim was a knifeknut and had a bunch of 'em throught the years.
More and more as his fame grew...they prolly grew with his fame too :D
 
reports are that both James and his brother Rezin Bowie were knife afficianados and owned many knives as well as giving knives away to friends and to business partners. The history of the Vidalia Sand Bar Fight says that James Bowie's knife at the time was a large butcher type knife, implying that it had no sharpened clip but a straight back. Such knives were made by James Daniel Searles, a knifesmith in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, just up the road from Rezin Bowie's plantation, so it may very well be that Jim carried one of Searles's knives at the Sand Bar Fight.

We do know that Rezin gave a Searles Bowie to a Henry Fowler because the knife's German silver scabbard, with an inscription to that effect, is on display at the Alamo Museum. For Jim to have carried at least one Searles Bowie would seem reasonable.
 
Jim Bowie had many knives, and though it is true that there have been no knives found that can be authenticated as having belonged to him, there are a few that experts think quite likely were his.

There is still a fair bit of doubt as to whether James Black made Bowie No.1. A few of the experts still are not convinced that James Black made any knives at all, since none have ever been found with any markings that would identify them as such.

Along with Daniel Searles, another maker by the name of Henry Schively made knives in a style that would have resembled a butcher knife. It is thought that Jim Bowie owned a knife made by this maker, though it was probably after the Sand Bar fight that he aquired it.

Some of the historians believe that the first bowie knife was designed by Rezin (pronounced, Reason) Bowie and made by either Jesse Clift or by a blacksmith with the last name Snowden.
 
I suppose like all good history / fables / stories / legends
... the plot thickens! :D

I love this kind of stuff .. who did what, where, how, and when ... and perhaps more importantly, how do you prove it - where's the creditable evidence to support the findings? :foot:

Again, thanks for the info guys - most interesting.

Joe
 
I know Bernard Levine thinks, or at least thougt, that the original knife made up for Bowie was found in a private collection. It is not known which knife he had at the Alamo, though.

One of these knives may have been the Bart Moore Bowie, which was supposedly found by a MExican soldier at the Alamo. However, the Moore family that eventually owned it declined to have it tested to see what the metallurgy was. So the authenticity of it was never proven.

Any of you have photos of knives of the Bart Moore pattern?
 
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