Gentlemans Bowie

[ysforge]

A few months ago, a good customer ordered a small bowie with dmascus fittings and a stag handle, I had the knife almost ready for assembly when he had to cancel due to medical bills, I gave him his deposit back, (like I said, he's been a GOOD custmer) and set the unfinished knife aside, to languish on "the shelf."

Fast forward to this afternoon, I was getting frustrated with a pot rack I was working on, with it's 35 forge welded junctures, and decided I needed to work on something else, so I went to the shelf, and decided that I could finish this one up, but not with stag and damascus as originally specified. Here's the result:

Overall length is a hair under 10" with a blade that's exactly 6" from tip to guard, The blade is forged from 208 layer angel hair damascus made from 1070 and l-6 The guard is made from coin silver, which is about 80% silver by weight, but much tougher than sterling, and wil go longer without tarnishing. The handle is gabon ebony and purple heart. The shape of the handle emulates the "bag" shaped handle popular on pocket pistols of the mid to late 19th century.

I still need to sharpen the knife, make a sheath, polish the handle, and add a silver pin through the tang, but all that will wait until I get home on monday.

I appologize for the quality of the pictures, and yes, the purple heart is purple, not the brown color that shows up in the picture.

and since the pattern is hard to see in the above picture, here's a close up:

Tony (See, I do make knives occasionally )

 

[jiminy]

It definitely looks 19th century. And it may qualify as both a knife and a sap

 

[ysforge]

It definitely looks 19th century. And it may qualify as both a knife and a sap

The mid to late 19th century is one of my favorite time periods as far as weapons go, both bladed and barreled. I've got a little under hammer cap lock that I'm working on that should match this one nicely.

Tony

 

[Bruce Bump]

Jiminy, Nice knife I cant wait to see the under hammer and knife set. The pot rack sounds interesting too.

 

[ysforge]

Jiminy, Nice knife I cant wait to see the under hammer and knife set. The pot rack sounds interesting too.

Thanks for the comment Bruce, I'll be a while on the underhammer though, keeping busy mostly with the decorative stuff for now, can't seem to make certain things quick enough to keep up.

Bruce, when you make your barrels, do you weld wrought around a mandrel, or do you just drill a solid bar of something else? I'm just curious, I've always welded mine, but it's dissapointing when I proof them and have one in every ten or fifteen give up at a weld, so I was wondering how you did it.

I'll ask the customer about posting pictures of the rack, I don't post pictures of customer orders unless they want me to, I like to preserve folks privacy as much as possible.

I noticed that you thought it was jiminy who made it, it figures, I don't make that many knives, then don't get credit for the ones I do

Tony

 

[Tom Militano]

All I can get is the dreaded box with the red X, no pictures

 

[jiminy]

I noticed that you thought it was jiminy who made it, it figures, I don't make that many knives, then don't get credit for the ones I do

LOL! Hey, I'll gladly take credit for that one! Now I'd like for you to ship it back to me, please ...as you've had it long enough

 

[ysforge]

My web site host is down right now, thus the red x's, it should be back up in a few hours with any luck.

And Jiminy, I'll gladly ship you your knife, only a modest $400 dollar shipping fee

Tony