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My first bowie, comments welcome

J

jawilder

Joined
Jun 27, 2006
Messages
2,331
This was forged from a leaf spring for a friend of mine. It has cherry that was cut well over a hundred years ago by his Great Grand Father and has red, white, and blue spacers. It produced a very nice wavy hamon.

This was also my first attempt at this type of sheath.

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I would not care if this was your hundreth Bowie, Fine job.
 
Really like it, what type of medium did you use for the differential heat treatment? refractory clay?
 
For the heat treat I only quenched the edge in peanut oil. I quenched the blade twice. I took it to 400 grit then mobil 1 and 220 grit sandpaper. The finish was fast and easy.
 
jawilder said:
For the heat treat I only quenched the edge in peanut oil. I quenched the blade twice. I took it to 400 grit then mobil 1 and 220 grit sandpaper. The finish was fast and easy.
Click to expand...

i'm impressed with the differential treatment being so visable! might have to light the forge this weekend!!! :D
 
Great job! I really like the overall look of this piece. To me it comes across as being as old as the wood on the handle. Did you come up with the blade shape as well or did you look another piece as a reference? What are the blade specs?
Mike
 
The man I made it for showed me a picture of a Western Bowie and a picture of a coffin bowie and said he wanted something similar to the two. I used my western bowie as a very rough idea for the blade. The handle is not quite a coffin bowe handle, but I thought it was a good mixture. The handle did come out a bit shorter than I wanted.

This blade is much narrower and about 1" shorter than the western. The blade is .25" thick with a full flat grind.

My origional intent was not to have a butt cap but as I was sanding I ran into the holes that I drilled for the tang so I had to shave some wood off and put two pins and a butt cap on it. The cap is milled on the inside so the end of the tang goes into the cap about 3/16, just enough to put the pins on.

The guard was secured using JB weld. I tried to silver solder it several times but ended up with JB. I liked the JB Weld so much, I think I'll use it as often as I can.
 
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