Paul Chen Bowie Knives

MelancholyMutt:
Manchuria does not exist anymore as it is now called HeiLongJiang Province, so my original arguement is valid.
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Just a quick note:

Historic Manchuria more properly corresponds collectively to the three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning, now called Dongbei 'The Northeast' in Modern Standard Chinese. The capital of Liaoning Province, Shenyang, where I lived for a short while, is the site of the original Manchu imperial capital of Mukden. The port city of Dalian, where the Hanwei factory is located, is also in Liaoning.
 
By The Sword now lists the new Hanwei line of bowies on their site, with the Bell Bowie priced at $179.

From the site:

The Historical Bowie Series from CAS/Hanwei demonstrates the evolutionary progression of the knife throughout America. Each piece in the series is constructed with a high-carbon steel blade and nickel finish fittings. The sheath to each knife is Grafted from beautiful leather with meticulous stitch work and a belt frog is included. Each knife is unique in its own right with distinct detailing.
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Yes, sheaths are "Grafted" from beautiful leather. :)
 
There's a review of the Outrider in the current issue of TK--Karwan reports it as being 440C, not HC.
 
The Outrider is not in the "Hitorical Bowie" line.

The Historical Bowie line is all High Carbon Steel.
 
I just got the Bell Bowie yesterday from 888KnivesRUs. It is a beauty!!! Now I want more of those Historical Bowies. They are an incredible value for the price.
 
Beck,

Did you mean the Bagwell Bowie? I have always thought his Bowies embodied everything a fighting knife should be(as did he, of course). I am starting to make Bowies and am considering getting an ontario version of one of his so I better know how they are 'meant' to be.

WYK
 
I'd love to get a resonably priced bowie sometime soon, I've been eyeing the Ontario Bagwells (that plate'd have to go though), how would the Chens compare? I think the Vicksburg is a bit short for a bowie at 8", and being large pawed, the dog bone handle look like it might be a tight fit. The Bell looks like it'd go head to head with one of the Ontarios though, anyboby get a chance to handle both?

FullerH said:
I still tend to thionk of it as Peking and the late Chairman as Mao-Tse-Tung, so what do I know? Of course, I also say "an historical novel" and "an hotel" so some of my English is as out of date as my Chinese apparently is. ;)
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I teach ESL as a side gig, one of my students is a 75 year old Long March vet. He still calls it Peking, so don't sweat it Hugh, you're in good company.

[grammarrant]The choice between the articles 'a' and 'an' is made based on the sound, not the letter. 'An' hour, hour has a silent h, 'a' hotel, no silent h. 'A' european, 'a' union, but 'an' umbrella. This isn't a recent developement, it's always been the accepted use, even with words having a weak h sound like history. Mark Twain was calling people on the the 'an historian' thing( humble, heroic, and historical: 'Correct writers of the American language do not put an before those words' (The Stolen White Elephant,1882).), been a point of linguistic contention for quite a while.[/grammarrant]
 
I've been selling these for a couple of months. I would consider them pretty typical of Paul Chen products and a good value. We included one in our March private sale and it was very popular.
 
"I've been eyeing the Ontario Bagwells (that plate'd have to go though), how would the Chens compare?"

Keep in mind that I have yet to handle either. Nevertheless, I think Ontario's bowies are made of a stainless steel, which would mean that the Chen bowies are superior with regard to strength & edge holding...
 
Not necessarily but possibly. There are some really poor carbon steels in China and some that are pretty good. Without knowing what Chen uses it would be impossible to say. The Bagwells have nicer fit and finish than the Chen. The Chen models are reproductions of actual bowie knives. The Bagwells are indicative of the style of the times but not really reproductions.

If you want a bowie knife as a user, I wouldn't buy any of these. There are plenty of bowies with good steel and less "fashion" that would get the job done. I think these are really collector knives. Take care.
 
It depends on what you mean by 'use'. Bowies are mainly used to cut people - not for utility. Just about any Bowie made would work relatively well for that. Some survival knives are based on Bowie designs, but these are not Bowie knives in the spirit of Jim Bowie, and not necessarily the topic of this particular thread. Bear in mind that Bill Bagwell personally oversaw the design of the Ontario series, so the heft and balance are very good. Stainless will cut people as well as anything. Afterall, shaving razors are mostly stainless. I don't know what the heck QS13 440A is, though. But it should be softer than 440c, and thus a tad tougher, but hold an edge well enough for people slicing.
I agree, though. I would rather have a Bowie in 5160, 01, L6(my personal so far), 1084, or Damacus, etc. But for around $150, the Chen and Ontarios can't be beat.

My Bowie:
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I use it mostly as a survival/hunting Bowie. It has an L6 blade made from a reclaimed saw blade compete with the original pitting in the mill blade left on the spine. Steve at Choctaw Plantation traded me one of my knives for it.

KnifeOutlet has the Bagwells for sale:
http://www.knifeoutlet.com/catalog/Ontario_Knives/ONBB.htm

WYK
 
Comparing my Paul Chen Bell Bowie to my Ontario Stealth Bowie I see some significant differences. The Paul Chen bowie is a hell of a lot prettier. For a collector's knife, it cannot be beat.

As a user knife, the Ontario has the edge. The Chen Bell Bowie has a very narrow handle - the smallest of any large knife I own. Also the sheath of the Chen Bowie, while beautiful, fits the knife very tightly. It is somewhat difficult to pull the knife out of the sheath. This is a very bad trait for a defensive knife.

I agree with KnifeOutlet that there are better using knives for both utility and defense. But if you are like me and collect far more knives than you use, go for the Chen bowies. They are gorgeous, and vastly better quality than the Indian made junk.

If you ever do actually need to use a Paul Chen Bowie, I am sure there are ways to remedy both afformentioned problems. Some tape could be wrapped around the handle to thicken it up, for example.
 
I have both the Chen Bell Bowie and the Musso style Bowie from Imperial Weapons.

Both are designed to optimize different primary uses in my opinion. The Bell is primarily a thruster which can also cut pretty well, while the Musso (with the same length blade) is more like a short broadsword.

The Bell Bowie does have a very tight sheath, but it "works in" surprisingly quickly.

I posted a couple of pics of my Generation 2/Imperial Weapons Musso piece over at Sword Forum International:

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=565900#post565900
 
I have both the Ontario Hells Belle and one of the Generation 2 versions of the Musso Bowie. The Hells Belle is an uncompromised fighting knife for the person who wants a weapon that will, in accomplished hands, be as deadly at close range as any firearm. Note that I said, "at close range". Of course a firearm can easily outreach any knife or sword, that is why the gun superceded the blade as the weapon of choice. But, up close and personal, a Hells Belle in capable hands is about as deadly an item as I would care to imagine. It is sleek and very, very fast, and it slips under a coat or jacket very nicely.

The Musso Bowie, on the other hand, is exactly what it seems to be, a frontiersman's primary blade. It can be a deadly fighter, more of a chopper/slasher than the Hells Belle, what with its weight and the belly on the blade. It is decidedly more blade heavy than the Hells Belle, but that would have needed to be were it to have been expected to split a heavy skull or to dispatch a wounded black bear. In the days of the single shot pistol and rifle, a sturdy back-up blade was not a luxury.

If I may borrow Dale Seago's comments from SwordForum, here is the best summary of the Gen. 2 version of the Musso Bowie:
Dale Seago said:
Fighting knives were commonly carried in Bowie's day. But there is something about the overall shape of this knife that says to me that if the Musso Bowie is not the knife James Bowie actually carried in his final days, it should have been. It definitely gives the effect mentioned by Davy Crockett in one of his diary entries early in the Alamo siege:

"While we were conversing, Colonel Bowie had occasion to draw his famous knife, and I wish I may be shot if the bare sight of it wasn't enough to give a man of a squeamish stomach the colic, especially before breakfast."
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The Bell Bowie does have a very tight sheath, but it "works in" surprisingly quickly.
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It sounds like Mr. Seago has had much better luck than me. I have been sheathing and unsheathing my Bell Bowie over and over, but it does not seem to get one bit looser. One could build up big muscles taking my Bell Bowie out of its sheath repeatedly.

What can be done about this? Right now I consider the sheath to be completely unusable. An ultra tight sheath for a defensive knife just won't do. I need a knife sheath, not an exercise machine.
 
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