vintage Bagwell on blade length

[GibsonFan]

This is interesting... I'm sure many of you are familiar with Bill Bagwell. I think he was one of the co-founders of ABS? Wrote a couple years worth of columns for Soldier of Fortune magazine, basically expounding that a bowie 9-10" in length is the ultimate fighting/survival blade. I learned a WHOLE lot about knives from his columns.

Anyway, I got an old SOF off Ebay, the issue from January 1981 (pile of Cambodian skulls on the cover... yikes!) Inside, B.R. Hughes interviews Bagwell and someone named Harry Kuhn in "Anatomy of a Combat Knife". It's a decent article, but the interesting part is that Bagwell is asked if he has any thoughts on optimum blade length and replies,

"I certainly do. I like reach, but not at the expense of speed. I have found 7 1/2 inches or so about right for most men, and I agree with Harry that eight inches is the practical limit."

I'm not trying to discredit Mr. Bagwell in any way. I just think it's interesting that his ideas (and his blades) grew over time. Also, it's worth note that the
Ontario Hell's Belle's he designed are available with an 11" blade.

BTW Bagwell's other opinions in this article were 100% consistant with what he says right up to his 2000 book. However, I missed the memo where he approved stainless steel in the Ontario bowies. Any info on this?

 

[Greg Covington]

Hmm.... Bill's early standard in the days of his SOF articles was 9.5"......but that later grew to what they are now. This came with his better development of the fighting Bowie.

This article being before Bill's tenure at SOF....he might have changed his opinion....but one of they key things he stated in the SOF era was that he found a 9.5" blade length is where all good things start happening with the performance of the knife as a chopper and deadly instrument.

Bill told me that he was able to have longer blades as his abilities to make them balance increased over the years

 

[Mike Sastre]

Hey Greg, how's it goin'?
As another who has had many conversations with Bill Bagwell concerning the Bowie, I'll second Greg's response. "I like reach, but not at the expense of speed." - that's the trick, the intangible called "liveness" in a fighting blade. It's the blending of power and speed generated by the knife/user combination. It has to do with how the knife is balanced and how this interacts with the wielder' natural attributes. This is why Bagwell wants to know height and weight, body type, hand size, etc., before he makes the kinfe. As his experience grew, he could maintain the "live" feeling in a longer blade, so optimum blade length is now greater than recommended 25 years ago, but the concept is consitent - see quote.

 

[the possum]

Hey guys.
Just wanted to add a couple thoughts. Now, I ain't trying to dispute things or nuthin', I just wanted to point out such things need to be kept in context. Knives may have been carried as backup weapons for a long time, but when people chose to enter combat armed with only bladed weapons, they were generally a whole lot longer than 11". Would you have been able to convince one of these guys to put down his sword in favor of a bowie knife?