How Does the Bowie Knife Cut Both Ways?
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A Double-Edged Weapon
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The Bowie knife is a much-storied, general purpose knife developed in America, becoming distinctive in the 1800s. It draws from a wide array of European and American traditions and was widely adopted not simply for its reputation as a fighting knife, but as a multipurpose blade capable of performing many tasks. One distinct element of what became the most commonly recognized form of the Bowie knife is what is called a "clip blade"--a blade with a scooping upper line from approximately mid-blade to the tip. This scooped out profile narrows the fore portion of the blade, making for a slim and narrow pointed tip leading to a much broader hind blade. The scooped out clip was often sharpened to match the cutting edge of the lower side of the blade.
Why Sharpen the Clip-Edge?
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The most common explanation for the sharpening of the clip edge has to do with the use of the Bowie as a fighting knife. Fighters may have intentionally wanted to draw on the skills of saber fighters (quite possible, as the saber was a popular and reasonably prestigious weapon at the time), which is a double-edged sword that uses both fore and backhanded slashes. They may simply have realized that having the potential to slash on the return gave them an advantage in a tight battle. Regardless of the reasoning, the result was a double-edged fighting knife, large enough to serve as a short sword but short enough to remain extremely useful and portable in non-hostile uses.
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The Legend
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The original Bowie knives actually appear not to have had the attribute of the clip-point or the sharpened clip-point edge. Descriptions of the original knife used by James Bowie indicate a straight blade with no scoop profile, compared to a butcher knife in contemporary reports. However the more evolved version of the knife is the form that came to be associated most strongly with the name "Bowie" and few people would consider a Bowie knife a really proper Bowie without the clip-point and the sharpening. Like the massively deep upper blade and the quillion at the hilt the scoop-tipped form is firmly planted in modern minds as part and parcel of any knife that accurately can be called a Bowie.
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References
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- Photo Credit Mike Cumpston, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
