Oh, If Only Busse Had Made A Bowie Knife 180 Years Ago. . . . .

Jerry Busse said:
I'm on it!!!!!:thumbup:

Jerry:D



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We're not worried about you being on it... I'd like you to get off it please! :eek:
I haven't bought a really expensive Busse in a while and didn't see one coming along any time soon... Please leave me my illusions! :grumpy: :D
 
Oh great. Any idea how many threads we're going to get in the next 24 months of how to pronounce BUSSE BOWIE

Boo-see Bow-ee?

Buss-ee Bew-ee?

Bew-see Bew-ee?

Bous-ee Bou-ee?

It'll never end. Just call it the HG110 (twice the knife the 55 is) and save us all. LOL
 
I'm not a fan of the Bowie (or most any clip) as I'm not of the kukhri either, but I am happy to see Busse expanding to please more peoples desires. It gives me hope that I may see the Muk one day. Maybe if I pray real hard I'll even see an INFI-hawk as well.
Anyhow, congrats to those who've been waiting for this. I bet it will be cool no matter the preferences.
 
i hope it follows the ounce per inch rule. Has a full distal taper, double guard, and sharpened clip. I'm also hoping for a 11"+ blade:cool:
 
Hmmm .... if I lived 180 years ago in the house I now live in I would be a toll keeper for the gateway to the Snake Pass toll road .... used mainly to move Grindstones from many of the small local quarries such as the one behind my house.... to the city of Sheffield for the then booming Steel Industry ..... where companies like Wostenholme with their famous "I*XL" trademark were sending many, many knives over to "America" to supply the huge demand for an "outdoor" knife ....

And at that time in 1830 soon after the 1827 Natchez "sandbar" fight .... when publicity and noteriety of "the Bowie" knife had reached even our shores .... there would be in the 1830's a flood of Bowie knives sent over to the States in the then build up for the Civil War .... maybe the first examples were coming past my house going the other way having crossed the Pennine's watershed to be transported by the local canal network to Liverpool .... the port of shipping .... and whether there is any truth in the letters of "commission" by Rezin Bowie to George Wostenholm for commemorative "Bowies" made to his design to give as gifts .... and how one of these was given to Jim by his brother and was the knife he died with at the Alamo or whether all the examples linking to Rezin were made in the USA by cutler/blacksmiths such as Clifft, Schively and Searles and the open question over the link to Jim Bowie designing his own blade and it being made by the blacksmith James Black .... are all fascinating "legends" .....

But there are some interesting facts lying behind the claim made by the Wostenholme knife company .... in 1826 the first ever knife factory was built in Sheffield where knives could be made from start to finish under one roof .... shortly after this was built other makers followed suit ..... the Wostenholme knife company built their's on Rockingham Street Shefield .... due to demand for knives in America 180 years ago in 1830 George Wostenhome made the first of at least 7 sailing crossings to the USA to set up a network for the sale of his company's knives .... they were headquartered in New York but had agents as far afield as San Francisco .... infact from the 1830's to the civil war in the 1860's the total knife supply from the factory was being sold in America ..... and prior to the Civil War 9 out of 10 Bowie's used in the conflict were made in Sheffield and the main maker of the Bowie design was Wostenhome with the I*XL trademark.

Whilst the first knife Bowie used in the sandbar fight is most likely a modified butcher's knife there is every liklihood that at a later stage one of their knives was being carried by Jim Bowie at the Alamo .... the quality of Sheffield Steel was far ahead of what was able to be produced locally by Blacksmiths at the time .... and a Wostenholme blade would have been a Busse of it's day and the best example available at the time.... there are certainly records of knives ordered by Rezin Bowie from Wostenholme's company as special commissions but he also spread these commissions around to USA makers as well .... so who knows .... certainly the Bowie exhibited at the Alamo traces it's roots to a gift from Rezin to a dragoon officer and was made by a US knifemaker .... and the image for me of Bowie knives passing by my front door having come over the hills so many years ago is quite a vivid one .... here is a pic of the Snake Pass in winter ....

100_0429.jpg


and here is old antique Wostenholme from the 1830's ....

WostenholmIXLBowie.jpg
 
It's ironic that the Bowie knife became famous because Jim Bowie was such a bad a$$. He was shot twice and stabbed in the chest with a sword and still managed to kill a man with his knife and win the sandbar fight. :eek::eek::eek:
 
Yes I agree .... he was shot in the lung with what would then be a flint lock pistol .... so the lung was punctured .... probably collapsed .... and would have a high liklihood of infection from the wadding and his clothing cloth which would have been blasted into the wound .... surviving that was something of an amazing feat .... going on to be fighting fit afterwards is nothing short of amazing .... pre-antibiotics and modern micro surgery .... you'd need to be a real "bad a$$" to survive :thumbup:
 
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