Last summer I made a bowie with a blade just shy of 6". It left me wanting to make another that would fix some design flaws and be bigger. I had about 10.5" left on the end of a bar and I figured it would do.
Design flaw #1 was that the handle of the first one was way too small. I forged this one out to 5" before I beveled it and it came out to about 5.5". I have small hands, so this is pretty big for me. The clip point on my first bowie came out pretty nice IMO but it was a little short and abrupt in the end. I was shooting for about half the length of the blade this time. Unfortunately, this just wasn't in the cards. So I ended up scrapping that idea and just going with a big drop point, like a rifleman's knife or uechizori tanto. Since I had already scrapped the idea of this being a bowie knife, I filed in a ridged spine like a tanto (I'm really loving the look of this on my knives).
Here it is just before heat treat:
steel is Admiral 1075/1080 (down to my last little bit, and then it's on to the 8' of Aldo's 1084 I just bought)
Total length is 35.5cm
Blade is 21.3cm
33mm wide at the base and 5.9mm thick
Heat treat and many hours of sanding later, here it is, pretty much ready for the handle:
When I started, I hadn't really decided how far I'd go with the sanding. I waffled between a matte finish (320 grit) and a finer finish (600 or 1500) before I finally settled on 320, as it is in the picture (the spine is still at 220 in the picture, but you can't see it). After I took the picture, I noticed a scuff in the middle of the blade and took it most of the way to 400. I tend to get pretty anal about my finishes and I was starting to feel some anxiety about it so I had to cut myself off. It's not perfect, but I'm pleased with it. I could have made it a lot nicer but I had to stop so it would keep being fun (a nice thing about not doing this professionally). This is the biggest knife I've ever made with the possible exception of a really ugly khukuri that I made in college. At any rate it is the biggest knife I've ever made that I put any kind of real finish on. Relatedly, I did everything by hand so it took a pretty long time to do — I will be glad to have this one finished.
The handle is going to be cord wrap over leather, fixing some of the problems I had had on my last knife. More to follow.
Thanks for looking.
- Chris
Design flaw #1 was that the handle of the first one was way too small. I forged this one out to 5" before I beveled it and it came out to about 5.5". I have small hands, so this is pretty big for me. The clip point on my first bowie came out pretty nice IMO but it was a little short and abrupt in the end. I was shooting for about half the length of the blade this time. Unfortunately, this just wasn't in the cards. So I ended up scrapping that idea and just going with a big drop point, like a rifleman's knife or uechizori tanto. Since I had already scrapped the idea of this being a bowie knife, I filed in a ridged spine like a tanto (I'm really loving the look of this on my knives).
Here it is just before heat treat:
steel is Admiral 1075/1080 (down to my last little bit, and then it's on to the 8' of Aldo's 1084 I just bought)
Total length is 35.5cm
Blade is 21.3cm
33mm wide at the base and 5.9mm thick
Heat treat and many hours of sanding later, here it is, pretty much ready for the handle:
When I started, I hadn't really decided how far I'd go with the sanding. I waffled between a matte finish (320 grit) and a finer finish (600 or 1500) before I finally settled on 320, as it is in the picture (the spine is still at 220 in the picture, but you can't see it). After I took the picture, I noticed a scuff in the middle of the blade and took it most of the way to 400. I tend to get pretty anal about my finishes and I was starting to feel some anxiety about it so I had to cut myself off. It's not perfect, but I'm pleased with it. I could have made it a lot nicer but I had to stop so it would keep being fun (a nice thing about not doing this professionally). This is the biggest knife I've ever made with the possible exception of a really ugly khukuri that I made in college. At any rate it is the biggest knife I've ever made that I put any kind of real finish on. Relatedly, I did everything by hand so it took a pretty long time to do — I will be glad to have this one finished.
The handle is going to be cord wrap over leather, fixing some of the problems I had had on my last knife. More to follow.
Thanks for looking.
- Chris
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