The Bowie as an art form? or how to "Part-up" an opponent...

[ZVP]

  Yesterday I was playing with my Bowie, trying to envision and make a few thrusts with the big blade when a little voice in my head kept repeating the story of the Great Sand Bar fight where Col Bowie had hacked a large hunk of an attackers forearm off and it really dawned on me thet the Bowie is more of a meat cleaver than a conventional knife! The handle holds like an Axe and the natural stroke with it is a chop.
Using this scnerio I could envision the real worth of the huge blade! Yes a stabbing thrust is possible but given the huge amount of blood that would get flung on the handle the grip would quicklly get slick, whereas using the aforementioned chopping action less splatter would contact the handle.
  Does anyone know where to read up on the old knife fighting schools of the days of Jim Bowies knives popularity? Ihave only read that there were a number of schools teaching the arts of fighting with a Bowie. Their stories have to be out there somewhere.
It;s a heck of an instrument of chaos!
ZVP

[GunClick Rick]

You should have seen the fight me and Sam had when i stole his..

[Forty Rod]

You should have seen the fight me and Sam had when i stole his..

]

That why they call you Peg-leg Hook?

[Cliff Fendley]

The Sandbar fight knife didn't have a clip point and was basically a big butcher knife. Swinging or hacking would have probably been the method of use.

Blade magazine did a series of articles on the original "Bowie" knives earlier this year.

[Bob R.]

There were a number of *fencing schools* (and other martial arts) that taught as a part of their curriculum knife-fighting, but these schools were in some cases from very different backgrounds and traditions (Spanish, Italian, French, saber, etc). Given that during the time 'bowie' became the common idiom for any sort of big knife (sort of like Grosse Messer in German - pardon the lack of the umlautte), it is unlikely that they are teaching some specialized knife fighting specifically for what we would think of today as a classic bowie knife. Our definition of what one is(driven by modern colletion), is likely a stricter definition than what was used by the mid 19th century.

[Shotgun Franklin]

Yep. The alleged experts seem to want any big knife to be a Bowie. I guess it makes selling Great Aunt Sally's bread knife much easier and more profitable.

[St. George]

First - stop playing with your knife - you'll likely cut yourself.

The term 'bowie' referred to pretty much any large-bladed knife - the one commonly associated with the 'Sandbar Fight' qualifies as a large butcher knife, and likely was merely that.

Any 'Schools of Instruction' were in operation well before the advent of the revolver - once a reliable second and third shot could be delivered - the tactical usefulness of a large knife was gone, as it had reached maximum popularity in an era of the single-shot pistol - useful because reliable ignition of the piece didn't always happen, and a knife was always 'ready', though dirks and daggers were probably most often carried.

These 'Schools' were the product of the fevered imagination of fiction writers - among them Raymond Thorpe - who further added to the mythological properties of the knife.

Read Flayderman's 'The Bowie Knife' - you'll be well and properly amazed.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!