IMightBeWrong
Loves a smelly brush
First bottle of this stuff to try out alongside my current EDC.
Bourbon and Blades
- Thread starter DoctorShavegood
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #22
Nice bourbon, nice knife, nice shot.
Oh man, this is a freakin' cool thread. I am going to have a lot of fun posting here. Will be back tomorrow with a bottle of Angel's Envy Finished Rye Whiskey and a knife from my (crazy extensive) collection of edged weapons.
Tim
Tim
OK, here is my bottle of Angel's Envy Finished Rye, which is a delicious bourbon I love to sip neat from a Glencairn glass. And accompanying this fine example of 'fire water' is a classic Bowie knife manufactured by Western.
Tim
Tim
- Thread starter
- #25
Now that is a knife.
- Thread starter
- #26
What manufacture is your EDC?
Yes, I have three or four of these monsters in my collection. Some are WWII era and some from the Vietnam War era. These large knives were particularly population in jungle warfare, ex. Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO) and throughout Vietnam's mountainous jungles.
Tim
- Thread starter
- #28
When we read stories about the heroes of the Alamo, namely Crockett, Travis, and Bowie, it’s very hard to separate fact from fiction. Legends about the lives of these men are numerous, and when the legend is more romantic than the fact, it seems fiction takes center stage.
In the case of Jim Bowie, he has been labeled as a slave owner, womanizer, and knife-wielding brawler. From the research that I’ve found on the man, most of these descriptions of him seem fairly factual.
Long before Bowie came to Texas his reputation as a formidable knife fighter had already been established in the South. Although he was said to be mild mannered, Bowie was quick to anger when he felt that he had been insulted and he often used his knife to settle the score.
The famous knife used by Bowie is surrounded by more legends than the man himself. It is hard to find many stories that agree on who actually made the blade and how Bowie came by it in the first place. From what I’ve been able to glean from researching books and Internet sources, there are several different versions to the story.
One source claims that Bowie’s first knife was given to him by his brother, Rezin, and that it was simply a large butcher knife. The Bowie brothers were raised in Louisiana and the story goes that Rezin designed the original blade and commissioned a blacksmith in Avoyelles Parish, named Jesse Cleft, to make one from an old file.
It is claimed that this was the knife used by Bowie in the famous Sandbar Fight in Natchez, Mississippi, where he was stabbed, shot, and beaten half to death but still managed to win the fight. However, after this altercation Bowie’s older brother claimed that it wasn’t Cleft’s knife used in the fight but one especially made for Bowie by a blacksmith named Snowden. So it’s really anyone’s guess as to who actually made the knife.
Probably the most popular version of how the knife originated comes from the claim that the great knife-fighter himself, Jim Bowie, actually designed it. The story goes that he carved a wooden model to represent how he wanted the blade to look and then presented that model to an Arkansas blacksmith named James Black in December of 1830. Black was said to have had a very unique process for making knifes and it was a trade secret that he shared with no one.
Black produced the knife ordered by Bowie, and at the same time created another based on Bowie’s original design but with a sharpened edge on the curved top edge of the blade. Black offered Bowie his choice and Bowie chose the modified version.
After he took delivery of Black’s knife, Bowie went to Texas and was involved in a bloody fight with three men who had been hired to kill him. Bowie killed the three would-be assassins with his new knife and the fame of the knife was established. Legend holds that one man was almost decapitated, the second was disemboweled, and the third had his skull split open.
The mystery surrounding the famous Bowie Knife goes much deeper than how it came to be – fact is, it’s more important to historians as to what actually became of the famous blade after Bowie died in the Alamo battle. History tells us that Bowie was in poor health, confined to his bed, when Mexican soldiers came over the walls of the old mission on March 6, 1836 – according to The Handbook of Texas; Bowie was shot several times in the head.
Chances are that one of the soldiers recovered the famous knife and it’s anybody’s guess as to what happen to it after that; but once again, be they fact or fiction, numerous stories are out there giving different versions of what became of the great knife.
One version says that a Texas family named Moore hired a man of Hispanic descent in the 1890s who claimed he had been a private in the army of Santa Anna. Somehow he had acquired Bowie’s famous knife. The story goes that he owed the Moore family some money and gave them the knife in payment of the debt. There was another story going around that the legendary knife was found on the ground after the Battle of San Jacinto. It’s my understanding that none of these accounts have ever been verified.
We may never know what happened to Jim Bowie’s extraordinary knife, but one thing we know for certain its owner was one of those responsible for the birth of a new nation – the republic known as Texas.
When Jim Bowie's mother was informed of his death, she calmly stated, "I'll wager no wounds were found in his back."
© Murray Montgomery
Lone Star Diary June 13 , 2013 column
A little store pick 375 of my favorite stuff with a custom folding knife made by my buddy Michael Burch.
Doc, thanks so much for sharing the article. I copied and saved it as a Word document and dropped it in the same folder as the photos of this particular knife in my collection.
Tim
- Thread starter
- #31
Beautiful Damascus with birdseye.
Here is another 'pig sticker' from my collection along with a fine bottle of Angel's Envy Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.
Of course, it is difficult to establish provenance. Nevertheless, the unmarked nature of this knife along with its size, style, and rubberized grip/scales suggests that, like the SOG knives used during the Vietnam War, this knife may have been issued/carried by covert Studies and Observations Group personnel. Others known to carry these knives include members of Army Special Forces and White Star teams.
Tim
Of course, it is difficult to establish provenance. Nevertheless, the unmarked nature of this knife along with its size, style, and rubberized grip/scales suggests that, like the SOG knives used during the Vietnam War, this knife may have been issued/carried by covert Studies and Observations Group personnel. Others known to carry these knives include members of Army Special Forces and White Star teams.
Tim
