Blade Blank Damast Coffin Bowie

The knife is absolutely beautiful, but something has happened in the heat treatment and it is slightly bent.

From my earlier review you'll see that I was not enamoured of this blank but I took it as a challenge & decided to see what I could do with it. The coffin handle is uneven anyway so I shortened it by 1/2 in. Then used an angle grinder to reduce it fron 1in. To 1/2 in. To turn it into a hidden tang. I then drilled out one hole to 5mm. To take a bolt of the type used to join wardrobes together - so I could make a take-down handle. I used 2 pieces of Rosewood, a piece of Maple & 2 offcuts of Olive green upholstery leather to make a stacked handle glued up with waterproof PVA so it could be removed for shaping. I took the shape from old photos. Of 1850's Sheffield made Bowies I'd seen in Knife 2017 book & modified it slightly - the finished product stands on end! I cut up an old brass, battered door handle from an Art Deco Oak Library door that I salvaged about 15 years ago & shaped it into a recurved, sword style guard. I shaped all these offset to disguise the twistt in the steel - all done laboriously a bit at a time with a Lot of reassembling to test fit. I ended up with a halfway decent Damascus, antique Bowie with a slightly bent, sharp blade. I showed it to colleagues, friends & family & not one person noticed that it was skewiff, i'm reasonably happy with the end result & learned a Lot along the way so this blank was not a Complete waste but it shouldn't have been necessary to go to all that trouble - items like this should be sold as 'seconds'. I'd pay £15 for a faulty item like this but Not full price. Better Quality Assurance would easily prevent grossly warped blades from going out to customers - good service is Not Just about Speed!

I was so disappointed with this item. True, it has very nice markings but the whole blade was not only bent but also twisted in 2 planes & impossible to correct. H.H. should have better QC on items at this price - how long can it take to open a box & check the product?

I had also bought the Knife Blade Bowie 8 1/4" and in comparing the two, whilst getting the edges done, I've found that the Damascus blade is considerably harder to shape leading me to conclude that it must have harder steel in the mix and therefore should make a good knife. There isn't much room on the handle however, only 105mm, so perhaps the larger Damascus Clip Bowie would be a better buy next time. I gave a 5 star rating as this has to be a very cheep way to get a decent Damascus knife if you have small hands :)