Hand-Forged Bowie Knife, Coffin Handle

It is a grip with flat faces and hard angled corners, wider through the middle and tapering toward both ends, so that seen from the side it has the outline of a coffin lid. It appears on a great many American knives of the 1830s to the 1850s and it is the shape most closely associated with the bowie in its own period. The reason it works is orientation. A round or oval grip tells your hand nothing about where the edge is pointing, so you have to look, or index off the guard. Flat faces and corners tell you instantly and in the dark, and they stop the knife rotating in a wet or gloved hand far better than a smooth grip does. It is also simply easier to make well from slab stock than a carefully sculpted round grip, which mattered on a frontier. The trade is comfort over long cutting sessions: hard corners press into the palm in a way a rounded grip does not.

Three things, and they all point the same way. Cutting the spine away in a concave sweep removes metal from the section forward of the balance point, which makes the tip lighter and the knife quicker to change direction. It brings the point down from the line of the spine toward the centre of the blade, which is where you want it for thrusting, because a point on the centre line drives straight rather than levering. And it thins the tip, so it penetrates rather than pushing material aside. The false edge ground along the clip is part of that thinning; sharpened, it also allows a cut on the back stroke. What you give up is tip strength, which is why a clip point is a poor choice for prying and why heavy-duty knives use a drop point instead. It is the geometry of a fighting and general-purpose knife, which is exactly what a bowie was.

Answer the legal question first, because it is not a small one. In several countries, states and provinces, a knife with two sharpened edges is classified differently from one with a single edge, and daggers or double-edged knives face restrictions that a single-edged knife of identical size does not. Sharpening the clip on a bowie can move it into that category. So check your local rules before you tick the box, and if you are importing, check the rules of the country the parcel passes through as well. If it is lawful where you are, a sharpened clip gives you a genuine back-cut and a slightly better thrust. If you are unsure or it is going on a wall, leave it as a false edge, which is how we ship it as standard and how many period bowies were made anyway.

No, and neither is anything else sold as one. The knife enters the record with the Sandbar Fight near Natchez in September 1827, where Jim Bowie used a large knife to considerable effect in a duel that turned into a general brawl, and the story spread fast enough that men across the American South were asking cutlers for one like it within a few years. The design is often credited to his brother Rezin, and James Black of Washington, Arkansas is traditionally said to have made a refined version around 1830. Jim Bowie died at the Alamo in 1836. What does not exist is a knife anyone can prove was his. Several candidates are argued over, none is settled, and every so-called authentic bowie pattern on the market is therefore a reconstruction from period examples and descriptions rather than a copy of a documented original. We would rather tell you that than print the word replica.

It is at the large end, and worth thinking about before you order. Knives made and carried in the pattern's own period commonly ran nine to twelve inches of blade. Large ones did exist and were made, but the enormous bowie in the popular imagination owes a good deal more to later theatre, dime novels and eventually film than to what men actually wore on a belt in Louisiana. Fourteen inches has real presence, photographs superbly and handles well because this knife is light for its length. But if you want the knife that is historically typical rather than historically possible, order ten or eleven inches. It will be easier to wear, easier to use, and closer to what a period buyer would have recognised as normal.

They are barely the same kind of knife despite sharing a name. Our Crossguard Hilt bowie has no clip at all: its spine curves downward through its whole length and the point drops below the line of the handle, which is sabre geometry, and it is a considerably heavier knife built around chopping and camp work with a full steel cross. This one is the historical article: straight back, true concave clip, point on the centre line, coffin grip, and light enough to move quickly. If you want a working chopper that happens to be called a bowie, take that one. If you want a bowie, take this one. The crossguard knife's page offers a true clipped spine as its first custom option, and this is that knife made as a standing product.

5160 high-carbon spring steel, brought to temperature in the forge, quenched in oil and tempered back so the edge is hard while the body of the blade stays springy. It is the traditional stock of our workshop and a good match for a long single-edged blade: tough enough not to snap, forgiving to sharpen on ordinary stones, and it takes a fine edge. It is not stainless, which is deliberate. Stainless grades that genuinely resist rust give up either edge retention or toughness, and on a fourteen inch blade with a thin clipped tip, toughness is what keeps the point on the knife.

Yes. The tang is the full width and shape of the coffin grip with rosewood slabs pinned through it, and you can see the tang as a line running between the slabs around the whole outline of the handle. That is the correct construction for this pattern and it is what a coffin handle is built around — the shape comes from slabbing a flat tang, which is one reason the style became common. Check any knife claiming a full tang the same way: look along the top and bottom of the grip for a continuous line of steel between the scales. A knife where the wood wraps all the way round is a hidden tang, whatever the listing says.

Sharp and ready, with the main edge put on by hand at the forge. The false edge along the clip is left unsharpened as standard for the reasons in the legal answer above. If you would prefer the whole knife shipped blunt — for display, for a gift, or because of the rules where you live — say so in the order comments and we will send it unsharpened at no extra cost, and we can rebate the point at the same time.

Yes, and it is the historically correct way to personalise one of these. A small brass or silver escutcheon plate is inlet flush into one flat face of the coffin handle and engraved by hand with a name, initials or a date. Period bowies carry them often, and the coffin shape suits it because a flat face gives the plate somewhere to sit properly, which a rounded grip does not. Tell us the wording and the metal in the order comments. It adds a little to the lead time and it is the single change that turns this from a knife into a specific person's knife.

For some of it. It will cut cord, prepare food, shape a stake and handle general camp tasks well, and the length gives you reach for things like splitting a fish or working at arm's length. What it is not is a chopper. A clipped tip is thin by design and the knife is light, so batoning it through logs or hitting seasoned wood is asking it to do a job the geometry rules out, and you risk the point. If you want one blade for camp that does everything including wood, a kukri is the honest answer and we make several. This knife is a bowie, and a bowie was carried for fighting, for utility and for status rather than for firewood.

In our own workshop in Tokha-3 on the northern edge of Kathmandu, Nepal, by around ten smiths, most from families that have forged blades for generations. Everest Forge has operated since 2010. We forge, grind, heat treat, cut and fit the grips and make the sheaths in the same building. An American pattern made in Nepal is worth a word of explanation: this is not our own tradition and we do not pretend it is, which is why this page tells you what is documented about the bowie and what is not. What our smiths bring to it is forging, and a bowie is a forged knife.