Bowie Knife

I decided to enter “The Bowie Build Competition” from Sam Towns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euZ8fS-doGA

Make a knife, that has a “bowie shape” – The parameters are:
– Must have a guard or bolster
– Must have a clip/false edge (can be sharp or unsharpened depending on the legality in your given area)
– Must have a blade no less than 8″ (200mm) in length from tip to heel
– Must have a handle no less than 4 1/2″ (112.5mm) long
– Must be sharpened and able to cut
– Can be of any material
– Can have any handle construction

Otherwise make it your own, since I’m most comfortable with wrought iron body and a forge welded steel for the edge that is what I’m making. A thousand year old bowie knife. I setup a photo camera and a the phone to capture video.

Getting Started

The first picture is getting started, it was a nice day (likely one of the last ones in November). From there the first step was to shape the 1.5″ by about 8″ round bar stock that I started with into bar so that I could weld the steel on.

Done Welding

I generally work in a pairs of objects, both to give me a “back up” and it forces me to leave the iron in the forge longer so that I get better heats. In this case I made to welded up two blanks roughly the same size. One was slightly larger that is the one that will become the Bowie, the other will become a Saex.

Starting To Shape

Once steel was welded on the wrought iron, the process of drawing out to a longer and thinner rough shape. This process was done using my wrought iron hammer that I have been experimenting with. There is no steel face, just wrought iron, so far it seems to be holding up well. If you strike the anvil by accident, for example using the edge as a fuller, then a little file work is needed to take out the divot in the face. Other than welding I used this hammer almost exclusively on the project. When I used a spring fuller I did switch to a modern hammer because that would have left marks in the face of the hammer.

90% Of Blacksmithing Is Waiting

Of the a little more than three hours of forging video that I have most of it seems to be waiting for the metal to get hot again.