real bowie knife?

[seniormcblade]

does a real bowie knife have a dbl edge . or is that hollywood?

 

[Joshua J.]

The concept of a "Bowie" knife is actually pretty fluid.

The best description I've read of the original "Bowie" knife is "large butcher knife".
Really it could be virtually anything.
There are a few patterns that are generally accepted as "traditional" bowie knives, most of them have a clip point, sometimes the clip is sharpened.

 

[swamp]

The concept of a "Bowie" knife is actually pretty fluid.

The best description I've read of the original "Bowie" knife is "large butcher knife".
Really it could be virtually anything.
There are a few patterns that are generally accepted as "traditional" bowie knives, most of them have a clip point, sometimes the clip is sharpened.

He pretty much summed up what I thought. There is a possibility that he had one made a little longer, thicker, and clip point. However, I have no evidence to prove any of it.

 

[freedoom]

Real Bowie knives all have an image of David Bowie etched on the blade.

 

[scattershot]

As stated, the Bowie knife is generally thought to be a large butcher type knife. Since the original was lost at the Alamo, no one knows for sure.

 

[Boozoo Chavis]

Here's a picture of the Cephas Ham knife displayed at the long barracks at the Alamo. More than likely this knife is a lot closer to what Bowie actually carried than the modern day interpretations you see.

 

[Ankerson]

Most people carried beefed up Butcher knives or just butcher knives out in the woods back then.

All the Bowie was was a beefed up butcher knife really.

The Knife Jim Bowie carried at the Sandbar fight was nothing more than that.

The Blade was about 9", Straight Spine, no clip point about 3/16" thick or so.

It was later on that the design was improved on for fighting adding the Sharpened Clip etc.

The Busse Battle Mistresses we see today are more like the Orginal Bowie than the so called Bowie knives are.

 

[lambertiana]

If you are talking about what are considered true bowie knives from the 1830-1860 time period, some were double edged, some were not.

As far as the sandbar fight knife is concerned, this one probably has the best provenance:

http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/adp/history/bios/bowie/forrest.html

 

[GIRLYmann]

a "real bowie knife"...which circa about thereofs,
would you rather have in mind?
speculating that the men in jim bowie's day had to be a pretty self reliant bunch.
no free ways, wal-marts, fast food stops and certainly all in a time where holiday inns were but a fiction of the wildest imagination.
i would presume that the butcher knives carried on horse back were truly for food preparation along the way.
Jim wasn't a mountain man, trapper, fur trader and such.
experience in his line of work and entertainment, must have caused him to consider to turn seemingly ordinary things into instruments of self-defense.