SOG Super Bowie: first impressions

N

New Pig Hunter

Joined
Dec 4, 2002
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in an earlier post I mentioned I had bought a Super Bowie ...... it arrived today.

Condition: New and In The Box.

First Impression: HUGE !! REALLY HUGE !! I was in shock and disbelief. It's like SOG attached an air hose to the SOG Bowie and added another 100 psi or more. WOW !!

I just wasn't ready for it, I didn't know what to expect. I grabbed hold of the leather handle and it is large in diameter. The guard is larger. And the blade ...... wow, it's huge !!

And sharp. WOW !! Whoever put the final finish edge on this particular Super Bowie: give 'em the rest of the week off with full pay and allowances, this blade is sharp/scary sharp/beyond sharp !! It was deforesting my arm in huge swaths. Effortlessly. Truly Incredible.

The handle has very nice finger grooves providing a good solid grip.

I used the calipers to measure blade thickness at the guard: 0.258" ...... so the real question is: what is the thickness of black Ti coating ?? Knowing that we can determine actual steel thickness.

SO .... I pulled out the Tigershark. Both are big, and hefting each I couldn't tell which is heavier. Probably a matter of tenth's of an ounce here or there.

It's gonna take me awhile to get used to the Super Bowie. WOW, whatta knife !! Gonna have to go pig hunting again so I can do some limb chopping down in the wash and see if it chops as well as the Tigershark.

Cheers,

Carl
 
New Pig Hunter said:
I used the calipers to measure blade thickness at the guard: 0.258" ...... so the real question is: what is the thickness of black Ti coating ?? Knowing that we can determine actual steel thickness.
Click to expand...

Titanium nitride coatings are usually about 1 to 5 microns or an additional .000039 to .000197 inches.

So, if your calipers are reading 0.258 inches, the true blade thickness would be between 0.25761 and 0.257803 inches thick.

When SOG gets back with the exact TiN coating thickness used, the chart linked will get us an accurate figure. For practical purposes, it's so thin as to be neglible. Looks gorgeous, though! :)

P.S. For the record, the SOG Tigershark is heavier at 17.3 oz vs. the Super Bowie at 16.9 oz.
 
Excellent technical info there, Thanks Much !! And if I do the math checking correctly, one needs to double the Ti thickness, since the coating is applied to both sides.

Regardless, this thang is thick ...... just like I like 'em !! Once again SOG has spoiled me on the 1/4" thick blades.

I'm still adjusting to the visual size of the handle ..... it's still HUGE !!

AND of course there has to be one problem: the sheath is not wide enough. The blade is cutting into the leather spacer which provides depth (i.e. blade thickness) separation between the top & bottom main pieces of the sheath (I hope that description is understandable). And both of those spacers could be a bit thicker so as to provide a less-tight fit. I really gotta jam hard to get the Super Bowie into the sheath. It will open up eventually, but personal preference is that it be loose-fit now.

Anyway, WOW !! What a knife !!

Cheers,

Carl
 
New Pig Hunter said:
Excellent technical info there, Thanks Much !! And if I do the math checking correctly, one needs to double the Ti thickness, since the coating is applied to both sides.
Click to expand...

Eeek! You're right!, I forgot about that!:o

That .25" + stock thickness is what makes those grinds so beautiful! Outside of some exotic customs carrying a four digit price tag, a SOG is one of the only ways to experience that sort of dramatic grind.

I don't know if this is going to be a "collector" or a "user" for you, but if it's the former, my advice would be to leave it out of its sheath for the time being.

Why? Sheath wear.

Even though the Super Bowie has a TiN finish, small bits of grit can still find their way into the sheath and scratch the heck out of it.

That's a painful sight on a "collector" knife.:( On a forum like this, it shouldn't be too hard to find a sheathmaker who specializes in collector quality sheaths.
 
Like all my knives, this will be a user....... no collectors at my house.

I'll have to find a 2x4 and do some chopping.

Cheers,

Carl
 
"Like all my knives, this will be a user....... no collectors at my house."
Love your attitude, Carl!
 
Ya know, this is rather embarrasing, but I received my Super Bowie way back the day after Christmas, 2006.

Here it is, some 9 months later and I finally took the Super Bowie out of the box and beat up on it.

I had an opportunity this past weekend to spend a few days in my most-favorite hideaway along the Kern River in CA. I had tossed it in the car without checking anything and when I pulled it out of the box and out of the sheath: it was dull. Dull of course is a very relative term, but it wouldn't de-forest my forearm. That to me is dull.

But I didn't let that stop me. There was a 4" diameter tree limb in my way, blocking the trail. But not just any tree limb, this one had been drying out for 3 years so it was somewhat hard in texture. I commenced to wail away on it with the "dull" Super Bowie. It took about 5 minutes of wailing to cut away enough wood to jump on the limb and break it. Then a shorter section of limb of the same diameter needed removal and that took about 5 minutes also. Let it be said I was showing no mercy on the downstroke, I was hitting the limb as hard as I could, sometimes with a one-handed whap and sometimes with a two-handed whap.

Of interest: the Super Bowie has a stacked leather handle and the handle/pommel is secured nicely in place with a threaded nut. It didn't take too long for that nut to loosen up. I reckon the leather washers may have shrunk a tad, or the nut just wasn't torque'd down to 500 ft-lbs or some such. Anyway, loosening up of the nut allowed the pommel to move around and the guard to move around. No particular biggie, I simply put a bit of a cinch on the nut as it loosened, wailed away, more cinch when needed, more wail, etc until the job got done. Let that be a lesson to all: check your tools before you start the job to make sure your tools are ready for action.

Overall: it got the job done. It doesn't chop like the Tigershark, but hey, I didn't expect it to. And because it was "dull" to start with, I can't say how much (if any) "duller" it became.
The Super Bowie handle has some definite finger grooves which made it easier and more secure to hang on to, both one-handed and two-handed.

So I'll have to put some serious sharp on it and go find something else to chop.

Cheers,

Carl
 
Interesting update, thanks for sharing. I have been thinking of picking one up for a while.

Go up the Kern River much ?

I'm up there all the time, our paths may cross at some point.:)
I'll probably be the only guy up and down that canyon fly fishing with my Sog Revolver on my hip.:D
Cheers
Jed
 
Hi Jed,

I usually get up to the Kern River 3 or 4 times each summer. I stay at Durrwood B & B, which is 20 miles north of Kernville.
I have dinner every night at McNally's Restaurant, which is 15 miles north of Kernville.

Cheers,

Carl
 
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