It seems you found your answer in the BL forum. And he was quite civil to you also. He did mention that no one knows what a James Black knife looks like because no one owns one. On this I disagree and side with the curators with the museum in Arkansas. I have examined the knives they own and read the curatorial anylisis. The provenance of the Carrigan knife could not be much stronger. And the age and methods of construction employed on the "Bowie #1" lend credence to it's origin as well. Detailed anlyasis by people who should know claims these both to be the works of James Black, and the Bart Moore knife to be a fake. It is true that James Black did not cartouche his knives, at least that anyone has ever seen.
This whole issue of the first maker of a "Bowie" knife, or "Arkansas Toothpick", as they also were called, became greatly clouded as the mystique of Jim Bowie caught the imagination of America and Europe as well. State after state passed laws banning them under both names, the latter seeming to be copies of the style manufactured in Sheffield England with those maker's own improvements and embellishments. Perhaps this was the first U.S. assault weapon ban?
At any rate, this leads us back to the question of "what is a Schrade?". What is/is not an acceptable provenance for a knife to be traced to it's maker? Would an excavation of the site of James Black's smithy shop turning up a blade of the Carrigan pattern preove the nexus to Black? Would a metal scrap dealer's saved scrap blades from the Ellenville plant be a Schrade? What about a knife documented as given by Black to a friend, or a knife in the Schrade sample department collection bought and sold during the liquidation of assets?
Codger
