Photos Western Bowie USA

K

kwackster

Joined
Dec 23, 2005
Messages
1,898
One of my recent finds, an early Western Bowie from around 1965:

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Older thread about this knife:
http://www.bladeforums.com/threads/...-and-other-information.1330326/#post-15274576
 
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The knife as it looks at the moment.
Reground the already convex blade but now to a zero edge of about 30 degrees inclusive & contoured the handle.
Still have to work on the swedge & guard and restitch the sheath.









 
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I'm currently experimenting a bit to find out if shimming the guard with a few small pieces of brass sheet is a viable option.
While it works very well to immobilize the guard 100 % even during maximum force chopping (just tested the knife again in the woods an hour ago), the shims need to be smaller to be totally invisible.
The 1095 Cro-Van blade steel also holds up well; after taking down several thin trees / thick saplings (think upper arm size) the edge can still shave the hair from my leg.
And this is with a 400 grit wet & dry SiC finish deburred with 1.0 micron diamond compound on MDF.
 
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Thanks. I couldn't afford the real thing so I bought 2 replicas made by bear&son, both guards were loose. I read 2 or 42 knifemakers dicussing soldering, epoxy, etc to get that guard to stay in place, heard 2 or 10 opinions; since the knife is a work of art "whatever works" will be a unique solution.
 
Immobilized the guard with two narrow shards of brass sheet (one on each side), which were lightly tapped all the way to the tang using a small hammer & small section of a snap-off blade which i ground blunt & square.
The larger piece of brass sheet in the pictures is what was left after i used a pair of scissors to cut the two shards from, each one about a millimeter wide.
Also rounded the edges on the brass guard and polished it a bit.

 
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kwackster said:
Immobilized the guard with two narrow shards of brass sheet (one on each side), which were lightly tapped all the way to the tang using a small hammer & small section of a snap-off blade which i ground blunt & square.
The larger piece of brass sheet in the pictures is what was left after i used a pair of scissors to cut the two shards from, each one about a millimeter wide.
Also rounded the edges on the brass guard and polished it a bit.

Click to expand...
It's beautiful, thanks for the pics!
 
Why were you so concerned about the knife's history, if you were going to heavily modify it?
 
I think he restored, rather than heavily modified it. Apart from the contoured handles, which obviously makes it more his own and less collectible--or did I miss something?
 
Bill DeShivs Bill DeShivs :

Although i read the thread about this knife with interest, it was the previous owner who was concerned about it's history and who started the original thread about it:

http://www.bladeforums.com/threads/...-and-other-information.1330326/#post-17316858

When i acquired the knife from him i wanted to improve on it's functionality while at the same time conserving most of it's appearance, and that is also why i didn't cut off (part of) the rather large guard or exchanged the original wooden handle for something synthetic.
Both the full convex zero regrind and the contouring of the handle however greatly improve the usefulness of the knife while not disturbing it's overall looks too much, and i like to think the end result looks good too.

On a side note:

The way i see it is that this model has become somewhat of an icon of American knife making history, and i would like to see it revived again by a quality US knifemaker.
Thinking of a full convex version in either CPM-3V steel & original rosewood handle, or in Elmax with Micarta grips.
I'm quite sure these would sell.
 
Yonose said:
I think he restored, rather than heavily modified it. Apart from the contoured handles, which obviously makes it more his own and less collectible--or did I miss something?
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You would be very wrong. I'm in the knife restoration business.
 
image.jpg image.jpg One production maker tried, it was called the gold rush bowie by bear&son in Alabama. I don't know that is was very successful, but the kind of quality your talking about would probably cost the same as the real thing. Here's a couple shots
 
Bill DeShivs said:
You would be very wrong. I'm in the knife restoration business.
Click to expand...
If I bought a badly aged, original of the above, at what stage of the restoration would I be crossing the line into modification? Re-sewing the sheath, for example: if I bought a thread indistinguishable from the original (except by its age), and used the same pattern, I would still be "restoring" rather than modifying? Sharpening, polishing, obviously are acceptable, whereas cutting, rounding off, or contouring are not, if I'm not mistaken. I presume the op is not selling his, so I'm looking to buy one, but fully restored or perfectly preserved copies are above my pay grade.
 
Restoration means returning the knife to the condition it was when new. Full restorations a sometimes impractical, so partial restoration is in order.
 
The Western 49 is a brute of a knife. Your modifications look very good on the 49. I bought a collection of knives that had a lot of bowies in it and there was a couple Western 49's in the stuff. One was original and the other had been cut pretty roughly and given up on. I assume the person was attempting the Bagwell modifications. I am no knife modder but I did make a weak attempt at polishing the turd a bit. The handles were just crudely thrown on , so I worked them down to a decent grip. The blade top was just ground flat out to the tip so I reground it a bit closer to what Bagwell was referring to. The guard was cut and ovaled but very out of proportion so did my best to smooth out the flow of the curve. Finished it off with some Lemon juice to get a patina and quit at that. No beauty , but still a beast of a knife.
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Yesterday i continued playing / testing / finetuning the knife somewhere in the Veluwe nature reserve.
About a week ago i thinned the blade just a bit more and the new apex now fits neatly in the 25 degrees slot of my Tormek WM200, and so far the knife seems to be able to handle that angle without any problem when chopping various kinds of mainly green wood.
No rippling and no catastrophic edge failures.
The only visible damage i could see afterwards when i got home was caused by the tiny sand particles which are omnipresent in and on practically all the wood in the reserve, and which cause those telltale minute dents in the apex.
Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less, depending on how close the chopped wood was located near the sand dunes.



But after about 10-15 minutes of stropping on a piece of MDF coated with 1.0 micron diamond compound & checking with my loupe all damage was gone and the apex was hairwhittling sharp again.
I intend to find out how often i can get away with just stropping the edge in this manner before i need to sharpen it again, which i do on a used sheet of 400 grit wet & dry on top of a big piece of fiber reinforced & semi-hard rubber conveyor belt.
On the wet & dry paper i use WD40 spray, which makes the silicon carbide grit cut more effectively, it keeps the swarf floating in suspension better than water, and it prohibits flash rust on the carbon steel.

Iirc the handle received 5 coats of IKEA cutting board oil, and after a long period of drying 1 more coat of Granger's wax to seal the wood.
Due to the contouring the handle now offers 3 hand positions:
- Exactly in the middle for a neutral grip (for general cutting)
- Against the integral pommel for maximum chopping power (for thick branches & smaller trees)
- Up front held loosely with your pointing finger in the cut-out for tip speed / snap cuts (for brambles, twigs, and thinner branches)

So far i have absolutely nothing to complain about this more than 50 year old knife, and it has already proven itself as an excellent chopper made in very well hardened steel.
 
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