_V_: The Bowie

Regular work has been a little slow this summer for me, so to fill the time I decided to make something that I have always thought about making but never have gotten around to actually doing. A Bowie knife. As in Jim Bowie (not to be confused with David Bowie. I know how you kids love that tight pants rock and roll). A man's man. Probably had a mustache, maybe even two. He was so manly he had a knife named after him. Not just any knife. The Bowie knife ended up being more or less the be-all-end-all knife of the frontier. Mountain men, trappers, explorers, soldiers and anyone else who went outside in the frontier days carried a version of it. Large, heavy, thick, sturdy, this knife could handle anything. Splitting kindling, felling small trees, skinning game, fighting bears or the occasional fool who accused Mr. Bowie of being a cheat. nothing fazed it.

The design varied a bit from smith to smith but the telling feature to me when I see a Bowie is the clip point. When the blade was being shaped rather than the spine of the blade going all the way to the tip the billet was usually 'clipped' off at about a 30' angle. This gives you about a couple inches of a reverse curved blade false to the main edge. The way I heard it, this was done so that the heavy blade could quickly snap cut backwards if you missed your main cut...but I have a feeling it was more utilitarian than that. I'm sure I could research this and provide all the answers but that is not my purpose here. Let's move on to the way I made mine.

I seem to be a fan of Stanley's 21" wonder bar for blades. At ~15$ it makes it hard to pass up. The process began the same as the last, nick off the ends and use the bar left behind. Now it's not perfectly straight when you do this, I have to straighten it out a bit using a clever technique I saw in a book one time. I hit it with a hammer.

When that didn't work I did it the right way using a different technique from a different book. Using a vice and three round pieces of metal 1/2 inch bar like teeth in the vice I crushed out the high spots. Sounds easy enough but it actually took allot of strength to straighten 1/4" thick tool steel. After I had it good and straight I readied my angle grinder with a cutting wheel again and made the clip. At this point all you have is a bar with a straight angle. Not very knife like. The key feature I wanted to accentuate was the flared out blade and curved reverse clip. Heat and hammer were the only solution and since I am between forges right now I used the next best thing. Oxyacetylene. Not the best way to do a knife but it works in a pinch. I heated the end of the blade and hammered the tip to a nice widened flare and a slight curve on the clip point.

The next step was the tang. I decided to make it 1/2" wide and the length of the handle for strength but thin enough to be hid by the handle completely. Angle grinder made short work of the steel in the way. Now for the guard. I had some 1 inch by 1/8" iron strap laying around so it volunteered for the job. I found the center and drilled two 1/4" holes in the center and used a Dremel to turn them into a square opening for the tang. I bent the back about an inch up and the front about an inch and a half downward than rounded the tips on the bench grinder. It seemed a bit too ordinary to me so I accented it with a small round file.

After I made the fit adequate I put a cursory edge grind on the blade with a 60 grit flap disc on my angle grinder. Sandpaper is astounding when it comes to making metal disappear.

That being done I needed a handle. Hardwood was the only choice. I found an old scrap of oak in the corner that fit my needs. The one piece became two by way of miter saw and a router table made short work of the channel needed in the center of both pieces. Just set the depth and select the right bit and go. The only problem was that the ends of the channel were round not square like the end of the tang. rather than use a hand chisels to square the channel, I rounded the end of the tang with a bench grind. Fit like a glove to use a cliche. All that was left was to glue and wait.

After a few days I returned to find the expected results. My two slices of wood have worked out thier differences and rejoined.

Now I could slide this onto the tang and get to work shaping the handle down.

I put a bit of wood glue in the channel to fill any gaps there may be inside and keep everything temporarily tight but it was kind of redundant as the fit was so tight I had to literally pound the block onto the tang. I made some gross measurements and got an idea of the rough shape and began to shape by taking away the wood with a large angry looking rasp that has a fondness for taking wood down faster than a power sander.

The more detailed bits had to be done with a small cousin. Using hand tools allowed me to maintain a large measure of control and make it just right. After a few hours of this I had only managed to take a little bit of my thumb knuckle off but the handle was as good as I needed to move onto sanding. Using a flap disc on my angle grinder I smoothed out the rougher lines and edges and moved onto 220 grit sandpaper for a hand finish. Nice and smooth.

All that was left was to rivet the handle on. Once again the drill press provided a wonderful solution for drilling precise holes through steel and wood all at once in a straight line. I used two standard nails and a ball peen hammer to rivet the ends over and that was that. This knife was roughly done.

At this point the finish work began. I sanded a little more on the blade and handle to make everything even and smooth. Red oak stain went to the handle to darken it and bring the color out. After the stain dried I applied two coats of clear coat to seal it and keep it looking nice.

Now as I looked at it I felt like the blade was a bit uneven on the grind. To protect the handles finish I wrapped it in a blue towel and painters tape and set to work with the angle grinder on sand mode.

When I felt like it was as even as I could get it I set the grinder down and resisted the urge that I so often get to over finish things and and up ruining them in the end. Hand made crafts in my opinion should have some flaws. I am no machine (although I am working on that). I finished the polish with sandpaper and oil and a rag. Next came the sheath. You can't just make a knife without a sheath to put it in. Its against the knife making code. True story. Luckily I live near a leather craft store where they sell everything you could want and more for making stuff out of leather. I bought a kinda rough piece of cow hide for about 6 dollars and measured the knife against it.

The color blends into the wood my bench is made of but you can almost see it. I used some shears to cut out the rough piece and began to punch holes into it for the lacing. I had to use a pop rivet to secure the most abused corner. Believe it or not, punching through two layers of leather at once is hard.

After a time of this I had enough holes to make this happen.

Tan is such an ugly color though. I am much more partial to darker brown for leather. I happened to have a trick to fix that. Normal people doing this would use leather dye, and they would be right to do so. But I used wood stain. Because I had it and it worked.

After it had a chance to dry I laced it up with the suede lace I bought with the leather. Not the strongest stuff in retrospect but it will hold. All in all, I think it turned out acceptable. And being something I made I decided to make sure I didn't waste my time. so I hit some stuff with it to make sure it could at least cut.