Ray :
It performed above expectations.
I could not agree more, to be blunt I had always thought that the claims made about forged bowies were more hype than substance. I didn't expect much of anything from Ray's bowie that I had not seen before. Immediately upon handling it I noticed the light balance and concluded that it would not chop very well and given the edge thickness reasoned that while it would cut well, it would take damage the first time that it hit a knot and would distort when it was used for heavy chopping on small limbs.
The cutting performance really has to be seen to be believed and was quite a surprise. I have thinned out my BM quite a bit and the forged bowie readily outcut it to an extreme manner due to the thin edge and convex geometry (primary and secondary). Ray's bowie could cut alongside some of the best small blades I have, blades so optomized for light use that they can't be used for anything else. Based on this I did not have great expectations for Ray's blade when I cut something a little harder than rope.
The first chopping I did was quite tentative, but after many days of work and no effect at all on the blade I eventually moved up to full force and the bowie held up fine, including clearing through a few knots every now ang again with no problems. Even when taken to the extreme, the edge only distorted slightly (too small to be visible on a picture), and that was chopping on small diameter woods that result in a hard twist (fractures of the wood mainly, or heavy interweaving of branches).
The concrete chopping was a bit tentative initially. The first couple of chops were very light and the edge did distort readily (sub mm depth, 0.1 - 0.2). However because the grind is convex and more importantly the steel didn't fracture but just impacted and deformed, the damage was kept to a reasonable level. I could resore it with a handstone in under an hour, in a few minutes on a 1" belt sander. Ray when you get it back, assuming you sharpen it could you comment in this regard?
Bugs3x :
Could you please share the reasons for the switch, and not subjecting the primary comparison knife with the Bowie test blade?
A fair and obvious question. It would get damaged to such a degree that I would need to remove a considerable amount of steel in order to restore it. I put off doing this until I accidently damage the blade in a similar manner (or decide to thin it out again) and thus keep the metal removal to a minimal level. If this doesn't happen in the near future, I'll go ahead and do it anyway and update the review.
The Strider was chosen as I had been discussing some issues of hollow grinds and ATS-34 in emails with a few people and wanted something more than just theory as part of the discussion. I also used a cheap 420J2 blade which really got tore up, it indented to a much greater extreme than Ray's bowie which I would have guessed given its RC is probably ~48 or so. I would have taken a few shots of that but a friend took it to do some work with and show a few people. When I get it back I'll add some details in that regard.
In retrospect I should have contained the chopping to sections of the blade, light chopping in one area, heavy in another. This way you could have more readily see what effect it had instead of chopping all along the blade as I did. Live and learn.
-Cliff
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