Why bowie knives for fighting?

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#c_becker: remember, the Kabar Marine fighting knife is a modified Bowie design, and has been popular with our military, who, hopefully, do more fighting than any of us. The SOG Seal knife uses the same basic design. Fairbairns and Applegates have never become as popular in the U.S. military. The latter two are actually more intended for killing than fighting. Our Chief of Naval Operations has said he had no intention of ever sending a Sailor or Marine into a fair fight. Mr Fairbarne wrote a book entitled "Fighting Dirty," in which his knife figured prominently. Generally in killing from the back, not fighting. The Kabar is for fighting.
 
Bowie knife? Was Jim a Roman? :D

S0p49i4.jpg


This blade was made between 200 and 300 AD.
 
Gentlemen.
You are approaching the topic as if there was a proper bowie knife.
There wasn't.
There were, however, thousands of knives like Bowie's.
;)

Before the Sandbar Brawl, and all of it's subsequent notoriety, big hell for stout knives were called butcher's knives… maybe even hunting knives (if they were used for hunting).

After Bowie's fame spread they were all bowie knives.
Unless used by a butcher in his shop.
;)

"I want a knife like Bowie's"


Pick a time frame and the knife changes. Even during the brother's lifetimes.
Because there was no set design, just interpretations of an idea.
This continues on today… how the BK9 is a bowie is beyond me… but now it is accepted as one.
As have the other iterations throughout the last century and a half.

Having said that, I'm enjoying the heck out of the discussion :)
 
Blackie Scantling said:
Why Bowie knives for fighting? Do you think Jim Bowie would have left the sandbar alive carrying a Spyderco?
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Jim Bowie might have missed the Sandbar Fight if he’d carried a Spyderco.

One version of that first clash with Norris Wright has it that Norris shot and missed. Jim jumped Norris and had him down. Jim got out his jackknife to slit Norris’s throat. There are technical difficulties in holding a man down while using both hands to open a slip joint. Jim was still fumbling with the knife when Wright’s friends separated them.

If Bowie had carried a Spyderco, he could have opened it one handed, and then opened Major Wright. Without Wright at the Sandbar, neither Bowie nor his knife would have gotten notorious.
 
Gingerman said:
#c_becker: remember, the Kabar Marine fighting knife is a modified Bowie design, and has been popular with our military, who, hopefully, do more fighting than any of us. The SOG Seal knife uses the same basic design. Fairbairns and Applegates have never become as popular in the U.S. military. The latter two are actually more intended for killing than fighting. Our Chief of Naval Operations has said he had no intention of ever sending a Sailor or Marine into a fair fight. Mr Fairbarne wrote a book entitled "Fighting Dirty," in which his knife figured prominently. Generally in killing from the back, not fighting. The Kabar is for fighting.
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What? Dude, the Ka-bar wasn't chosen cause it was better for "fighting", it was chosen cause it was still effective as a weapon, but was better for the mundane utility tasks like opening cans, pounding tent stakes, etc, that soldiers are much more likely to be doing than knife fighting. The FS was STRICTLY a blade for offense, and suffered as a utility knife, the Ka-bar could fight, but wasn't strictly a fighter.
 
Many if not most Fairbairns brought back from the war that actually saw service have tips broken from Marines and soldiers using them to pry open boxes. It's design was that of a sleek killer.
 
I carried a F&S on my first tour in Vietnam, and was worried about the point breaking off, so iIcut the blade back about an inch, to where there was more metal. I never used it for fighting and it was not much good for every day use. A very good friend of mine always asks what knife did you carry on your Second tour. For me it was a Ben Hibben Jungle Fighter, stronger, sharper able be used for fighting (never did) and every day cutting tasks, did lots of those. John
 
Damn it posted too soon. I'm typing with a broken arm. Sorry.
No, you're right. I was talking about the difference in blade design.
 
Here is a purpose driven fighting Bowie

Radical Distal Taper

Sharpened clip

Handle that Indexes well

Proportionate guard

Its easy to see why a piece like this would do it all in spades

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2f81d0da957d7f56b8b92828b5dba032.jpg
 
Joe, have you ever tested the harpoon/raised clip vs a concave clip?

Here's a concave clip taken to the extreme, a copy of a Civil War relic (so said the maker)


More familiar is the shallow concave clip style of the KBar or Buck.


IIRC Mr Bagwell (or some other popular writer) said of the clip point… that it was like having your 98lb wife stand on your foot barefoot (spear point etc) and then with high pointy heels.
All the force is concentrated in one spot…

Not a big fan of the harpoon style...
 
I think it's important to understand the Jim Bowie died almost 180 years ago, as far as I know, barring time travel or immortality, no one on this forum is old enough to have known him or even have grandparents old enough to have known him. You can't really discuss a 180 year old question with a modern eye especially when dealing with something as ambiguous as the origin of a very common knife design. People didn't spend time researching what their knife design was best for, they couldn't log on to youtube and watch some bozo beating the crap out of it with a log. We've got recorded images and sound; if they were lucky they had a store with a catalog with an illustration or a decent blacksmith. Did they really care what their knife was "originally" designed for?

For us, it's an argument of semantics, there's no right answer, what is a bowie knife? In a strict sense, the bowie knife was a fighting knife style named after Bowie and it only relates to a knife designed after his. Anything made before Bowie named his knife isn't a bowie. After, well, I've seen everything from a 5inch knife to a Rambo monstrosity which looks like it gets bigger in every scene referred to as bowie, are they really all bowie knives. It's like "tactical" or "survival" it's for selling purposes only, it doesn't really mean what it means anymore. Bowie designed or named a knife for fighting, which was probably based on a knife for hunting, which was probably based on a knife for fighting, etc. All of these have knives based on them which are used for fancy paper weights and splitting mauls and now every knife with a clip point is referred to as a bowie. All of this because some cave man was trying to make a dagger and accidentally shattered it halfway through. :p
 
tltt said:
My position is this -

1) Bowie knives were foremost weapons, and used as such. Both when various Bowie family used them, and when others used them, and when makers designed them and marketed them.

When you see the Bowie's using them it is as weapons in Affairs of Honor, and various melees. When you read of others using them, it's the same. When makers made them they did so as weapons, never as tools till much later. They had separate lines for edged tools, and general purpose knives.

Look at the actual designs -

http://barkriverknives.com/albums2/1A1/Later_Schivley.sized.jpg .

http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/7482/8787694_2.jpg?v=8CC7EC195CC2810 .

http://rusknife.com/uploads/monthly_06_2012/post-103-0-21958800-1339493189.jpg

http://www.timlively.com/images/englishbowies1.jpg .

http://www.timlively.com/images/englishbowies2.jpg .

http://www.timlively.com/images/englishbowies6.jpg .

http://www.svalbardrepublic.org/ebay/mpe0102.jpg .

Also look at the artful etches - They are etched with references to fighting and and various other combative frays. They aren't referencing woodsy or sporting pursuits. They are etched with such things as "self defender" and "protector", etc.... Not "ye olde tree beater" or "fireside whittler". No one cared about them as general purpose knives. They were designed, made, and sold with visions of heroic violence both real and imagined in mind for the most part. Their use as tools was for the most part secondary.

2)

The earliest findable comment by a Bowie that it was a Hunting knife was that letter in the Planter's Advocate in late 1838, a full 11 years after the knife first became in vogue. He had 11 years to comment that it was a hunting knife, but no findable reference is found in that 11 year time, and it isn't like Rezin and family were recluses, they were famous before the Sandbar Duel, and were near Rock Star Status after. Rezin regularly caroused with high powered people from all walks during those years, but never felt the need to harp on about it's pedestrian uses.

One could suppose that there are no early defenses of the knife as a hunting tool because there was a general understanding that they were weapons first, especially in the South, where personal duels were common, and that there hadn't been a need to defend it.

It only comes about after of a number of articles decrying both the family and it's name in the development of the knife. If you read the full text it's not so much about the development of the knife, but as a protection of the family name by an older and more well heeled Rezin. I don't wish to dig up all the articles decrying the Bowies and the knife during those years, but there are quite a few.

The text of the Planter's Advocate letter is here -

http://books.google.com/books?id=wb...Q#v=onepage&q=planters advocate bowie&f=false .

It is a defense of the family really, the defense of the knife is secondary.
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SORRY! The first printed reference for "Bowie knives" came about as early as 1834 to 1835, and NOT 1838, as mentioned above. And though printed references to "Bowie knives" are scarce prior to 1836, the verbal references to "Bowie knives" took off like wildfire, especially in LA and MS, after the 1827 Sandbar Duel.
Tigre6
 
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Why bowie knives for fighting knives? Because the design excells at it, despite the hype and BS we are innundated with today. Its a multi purpose tool, if not too finley bred. But its fighting characteristics, handling, backcut ability, and hand protection make it a class above most 'fighters".
 
They usually have a hand guard, big blade for slashing, and good tip for stabbing.

Coming from the guy who like to beat up trash bags full of shredded paper with a cheap bowie shaped cutlass from BudK.
 
UffDa said:
Bowie knife? Was Jim a Roman? :D

S0p49i4.jpg


This blade was made between 200 and 300 AD.
Click to expand...

:) Knife design influences are interesting. Considering the time and place, the mid to mid late fur trade period, there would be a lot of trade knives. It isn't hard to see some possible influences, particularly when the buffalo was still numerous and large butcher knives were used to process them. Here's an original Hudson Bay.

 
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