Gary Mulkey

We will never know for sure but most attribute the coffin shaped handle to Black. If memory serves me, Bowie #1 is thought to have been made in the winter of 1828/29. Jim Batson has a new book out that should explain this but I haven't gotten a copy of it yet. (I'm waiting until I see him again to get it signed.)

At that time the cutlers in Sheffield, UK were trying their best to create Bowie knives that looked as American as possible in order to fill the huge demand for them here in the states. By the time that the Civil War came along, 70% of all Bowies in America had been made in Sheffield.

I can't read the maker's mark on this one but it shows you how the style of Black's knives grew in popularity almost overnight. As far as I know Black only made nine knives. This isn't one of them but it shows how great the influence of them was.

I've yet to do a lot of "spit & polish" to this one but here's the fully assembled knife:

Progressing with the James Black knife: I wasn't satisfied with the silver plating on the top of the tang so I partially disassembled the handle, removed & replaced it (for this I had to remove two of the hollow handle pins as they passed through the silver plating). Once i have replacement handle pins installed I will begin the hand sanding & finishing of the hilt before adding all of the domed pin heads. (lots of tiny silver parts for these old stubby fingers to handle)

I believe that the only things that are easier to trade than a knife are guns & horses.

You will get some excellent advice here but nothing will teach you edge geometry like testing your blades. Make some blades with different geometries and do things like slice paper, cut a free hanging piece of rope, and chop through a 2x4 with each of them. See what geometry works best for each chore. This will teach you more than you would ever guess.

Often as I'm keeping my public shop open late, I don't feel like going straight to bed after work as was the case tonight so I managed to get the silver pommel wrap attached to my James Black knife. There's still a lot of hand sanding & polishing left to do but now i have all of the silver attached to the hilt but for the pins & domed pin heads.

I can appreciate anyone who is working on a budget but the best advice that I can give you is to buy some new 1084(1080) bar stock and learn with it. It's not that expensive and it will shorten your learning curve considerably. If you continue to use mystery steels, you will never know why one blade performs and another doesn't.

I made a checkered handle a few years ago with some old Westinghouse butterscotch micarta and it checkered much easier than this did. Maybe the difference was linen vs paper in the micarta.

Thanks, Gerhart. The paper micarta turned out to be a lot more difficult to checker than I had planned. I dulled most of my checkering files doing this one. I'm glad the imperfections don't bother you as that was the best that I could do with this material.

Thanks, Ray. The handle is paper micarta.

Here's the finished product of my Henry Shively style Bowie. This one wasn't intended to be an exact duplicate and has several of my own additions including a damascus pattern of my own creation in the blade. Hope you like it.

If you've watched all of the episodes then you have watched numerous master smiths be eliminated in the first round. That should answer your question.