- Joined
- Sep 7, 2006
- Messages
- 6,211
Some time ago I started casting about for a 'traditional' bowie, a long held dream of mine. Of course, there are any number of people making incredible bowies out there but I had a certain design in mind and I specifically wanted a hand-forged piece that was differentially tempered. A nice hamon is a great bonus of course.
To begin my quest I started a thread here and got lots of great suggestions and then after looking around for a while I got a bit sidetracked, as you do, and the project was put on the backburner for a while.
And then I saw a post by Stephan Fowler of a knife he'd made that got me thinking about this all over again. I had also bought Bill Bagwell's book and that really stoked the fire as Mr Bagwell is of course a huge evangelist for the bowie knife. I even briefly contemplated ordering from Mr Bagwell himself but realised that was perhaps a little too ambitious for my first bowie.
And then one day I found myself browsing Les Robertson's site and came across a pattern which really worked for me. Funnily enough the maker was again Stephan Fowler. Only that one was 8,5 inches and (inspired by Mr Bagwell's writings) I was set on a 9,5 incher. So I chatted with Les (a great pleasure) and of course Stephan was quite happy to accommodate because he's a very helpful dude.
Well, I'm extremely pleased to report that the knife is not only complete and on its way to me, but was also photographed by the great Sharp by Coop at Blade 2010. So its been forever immortalized in a way that I could never achieve.
I would just like to thank many of the posters here like Joe Paranee and RogerP who's great love of the bowie certainly inspired me to pursue this to the end. And dealing with Stephan and Les was a total pleasure and I highly recommend both these gents if you are in the market for a bowie or any hand-forged blade.
As to the steel, it is a fine grain W2, handforged and differentially tempered. Handle is desert ironwood, blade length 9,5 inches, guard is stainless steel.
The micarta handled version at the bottom is the one that originally inspired me...
To begin my quest I started a thread here and got lots of great suggestions and then after looking around for a while I got a bit sidetracked, as you do, and the project was put on the backburner for a while.
And then I saw a post by Stephan Fowler of a knife he'd made that got me thinking about this all over again. I had also bought Bill Bagwell's book and that really stoked the fire as Mr Bagwell is of course a huge evangelist for the bowie knife. I even briefly contemplated ordering from Mr Bagwell himself but realised that was perhaps a little too ambitious for my first bowie.
And then one day I found myself browsing Les Robertson's site and came across a pattern which really worked for me. Funnily enough the maker was again Stephan Fowler. Only that one was 8,5 inches and (inspired by Mr Bagwell's writings) I was set on a 9,5 incher. So I chatted with Les (a great pleasure) and of course Stephan was quite happy to accommodate because he's a very helpful dude.
Well, I'm extremely pleased to report that the knife is not only complete and on its way to me, but was also photographed by the great Sharp by Coop at Blade 2010. So its been forever immortalized in a way that I could never achieve.
I would just like to thank many of the posters here like Joe Paranee and RogerP who's great love of the bowie certainly inspired me to pursue this to the end. And dealing with Stephan and Les was a total pleasure and I highly recommend both these gents if you are in the market for a bowie or any hand-forged blade.
As to the steel, it is a fine grain W2, handforged and differentially tempered. Handle is desert ironwood, blade length 9,5 inches, guard is stainless steel.
The micarta handled version at the bottom is the one that originally inspired me...
