The Realm of the Dark Blade

Today I’m going to talk about a knife that is both simple, beautiful and yet highly functional… In a traditionally Japanese kind of way. When we talk about bowie knives, a Japanese knife might be the very last thing that might spring to mind, but believe me, as knives go, I would swap a bowie for this beaut any day. The “beaut” to which I refer is the Akatsuki Bowie, made by Kanetsune of Seki, Japan. Here… Have a gander:

Akatsuki Bowie

This ostensibly simple looking knife is unique in several different ways. The makers, Kanetsune, are old Japanese knife makers who make traditionally designed knives that are both aesthetically pleasing as well as fully functional. The Akatsuki is just one of many unique and beautiful knife designs they make. I plan to talk about some of their other knives in the future.

Now if anyone is familiar with the old Jim Bowie knife design, you may well be thinking that this design is not actually very Bowie like. At least not in any traditional sense. And you would be right. It is more of a hunting knife design than a bowie, but me personally, I still love it to death. Let’s take a look…

Akatsuki Bowie - Sheath

As you can see, Kinetsune uses a very traditional wooden scabbard design, with a cool set of buckles attached that support a few different carry positions. A wooden sheath certainly cannot compete with Kydex or similar synthetic sheaths in the durability department, but they certainly have a whole lot more character!

Akatsuki Bowie - Hilt

The knife itself is an interesting combination of design features, starting with the oak handle, double pinned to what I’d presume to be a half tang blade. Transitioning from grip to blade, we have a combination collar and guard, in black, pressure fit onto the grip, and providing support at the blade grip transition, much reminiscent of the metal collar used by many traditional Frost Mora knives with wooden grips.

Akatsuki Bowie - Grip

Except better, since this collar is much thicker, stronger and has a built in guard. I really like this design.

Akatsuki Bowie - Edge

Last, but certainly not least, we get to the beautiful blade. The Akatsuki sports a traditional hunting knife profile, with a mild belly and severely de-emphasized clip point. This results in a very smooth taper to the point. I really like the blade profile it ends up with.

Akatsuki Bowiel - Spine & Grip

But here we have a little bit of a departure from the norm. Unlike most other knife makers, Kanetsune leaves the flat of the blade unfinished. In fact it looks as though they actually pit it intentionally, in order to accentuate the effect.

Kanetsune Akatsuki Bowie High Carbon White Steel

Now personally, I have reservations about this particular design feature. Kinetsune uses white steel in their knives, a special kind of high carbon steel, and it’s been my experience that most high carbon steels tend to rust a lot faster than others if not taken care of. I think those pits may be a little harder to clean than a polished blade, and this may cause it  to retain moisture and allow pitting and rust to migrate to the polished area. However with diligent cleaning and oiling this should not be an issue, and I can’t really argue with the beautiful aesthetic it adds to the blade. For all of it’s simplicity, the knife is a work of art.

All in all, a beautiful knife, even if it’s not a true bowie knife, it certainly has all the qualities of a great all around hunting and bushcraft knife, with some character to boot. It gets a fiery thumbs up from yours truly!

Kanetsune Akatsuki Bowie Knife – [Kanetsune.com]

Kanetsune Akatsuki Bowie Knife – [BladeHQ]

As you should all well know by now, I have an innate bias towards blades of dark, pointy, sharp and curvy nature. However the nature of the sword industry today is such that most swords are made for collectors, and are generally shiny wall hangers. Obviously, this is almost the polar opposite of the kinds of things I look for in a sword. But every now and then, I find one that just speaks to me…

Junglee Short Sword

Meet the Junglee short sword. A symphony of modern technology melded with beautiful lines that look like they were taken from a few different sword styles. A beautiful curving blade of AUS-8 steel, that looks like a cross between a bowie knife, a scimitar and a khukuri. A blade that widens down towards the hilt into a small integrated guard, and then down to a textured kraton covered grip. All finished in an understated black teflon finish. Absolutely beautiful. I love it.

Now as short swords go, this is indeed a beauty. However I do have some concerns about it. One of them is about the steel. AUS-8, when properly heat treated, can be a great knife steel, possessing qualities similar to 440 stainless. For small knives, they are good, will take and hold an edge well, and provided they are sufficiently thick, are fairly resilient against flexing stresses. However these steels tend to be low carbon, relatively hard, inflexible  steels, so I generally do not like to see them used for swords.

Swords, due to their greater length, do tend to flex a lot more than knives do, and so my concern would be that under hard use, or in cold conditions, this sword could chip or break. A thick blade can generally help avoid possible breakage, but given it’s relatively light weight, (a whole 1.4lbs, lol ), I tend to doubt it is particularly thick. However to be fair, I should also add that this sword is a “short” sword, so the typical weaknesses of AUS-8 may not be as pronounced, and it could have been tempered slightly softer than normal in order to help mitigate that risk.

Another possible cause for concern would be the grip construction and material. While I love the way Kraton feels, and the kind of grip it gives you, most Kraton grips are essentially tang sleeves, and the tang has to be designed in a specific manner, or employ some additional retention methods, like a lanyard sleeve that goes through both grip and tang, for instance, in order to prevent the kraton grip from slipping down the tang under hard use. Don’t really see any of that on this sword, which means there is the possibility of the grip moving around on you…

So, if you plan to relying on something like this as a primary tool for survival purposes, you may want to keep the above points in mind.

But apart from that, I just love the lines on this. And the dark beautiful curves. Just can’t help it. I will probably never be able to rely solely on it for outdoor treks, however I’m probably still gonna get it because it just so cool…

Junglee Short Sword – [eBlade Store]

Today I ran across a couple of interesting knives from South African knife maker Herbst. To be honest, these are not really my kind of blade, however I thought they represented a rather interesting perspective on the idea of patterning the full blade of the knife…

Except, in this case, doing so through and through… Hard to explain, so here, let me just show you:

Big Five Bowie - 1 of 3

Allow me to present the “Big Five” bowie. A rather beautiful bowie, I might add, though I am personally not too fond of the idea of carving a perfectly good blade through in the name of aesthetics. However, as the name suggests, the blade is “engraved”, (for lack of a better word), with the silhouette of 5 big game animals. An elephant, a rhino, a buffalo, a lion, and another big cat or possibly other animal, that I cannot readily identify.

Big Five Bowie - 2 of 3

Certainly excellent work, if not for the little red flags that are going up in my head on account of the large gaping holes in the blade. And I will certainly admit to it poossibly just me being mechanically excessively anal retentive. But I have never claimed to be normal, so HAH! is all I have to say about that.

Big Five Bowie - 3 of 3

Here’s another one, perhaps mechanically more sound, (yes, yes, I know I am probably the only one who is thinking abou that, but I just can’t help it so leave me be!!! )  but really not my type:

Carved Damascus - Pic 1

Now I do like the curves of the blade on this knife, it’s just the flourishes in the blade are a bit much for me…

Carved Damascus - Pic 2

See what I mean? It is still beautiful work, it just that those particular aesthetic look more to me like it belongs on a wrought iron gate, not *in* the blade of a knife.

Carved Damascus - Pic 3

Still, they are all quite amazing, the real pity is that when I look at this knife, images of flowers and vines keep popping into my head, totally obliterating any possible chance at making some truly nice lines become evil. Yeah… And the green grip does not help dispel these images in any way, shape or form.

Which, as  those of you who know will know, is one of my most heavily ranked internal grading criteria for how cool the aesthetics of a blade are. As you can probably guess, even though the craftsmanship of this blade is superb, this knife did not rank all that high on my scale.

Hey, what can I say? Nobody’s perfect…  At least I was able to work through my hangups enough to share it with you. lol…

Yeah, you’re welcome.

• The Big Five Bowie Knife – [Herbst]
• Carved Damascus – [Herbst]

Knives have been a hobby of mine for many years. So to some degree, at least in the twisted delusional little world I live in, I believe I generally understand why certain designs incorporate certain features. But every once in a while, I am utterly, and completely stumped. Yes. You could whack me over the head with a wet noodle and I’d go down. No really. Here’s an example:

Kershaw Whiplash Tactical Bowie

This, as the label below it indicates, is the Whiplash Tactical Bowie, by Kershaw. Now I like Kershaw. They make some nice blades for the money. But this particular design just leaves me scratching my horned, hairless, flaming head.

They start off with a great looking, ostensibly full tang grip, and sporting what looks to be a strong fairly wide clip point blade with a cool flase edge… And then having taken one hit too many from a bong filled with month old belly button lint from a geriatric Orc, someone promptly completed the design in a way that should have been left in the mad stoners wonderland where it came from.

I mean seriously. Look at the slots in that spine. What is this knife supposed to be? A sword breaker? It couldn’t even do that, the slots are too small, and the knife is waaay too thin. For more thumb traction? Do we really need all that? I don’t think so Tim. This is exactly the type of design than just… irks me.

And then we have the grip. What the heck is that divot supposed to be? What is the point of having a full tang if you are going to violate it in such a heinous fashion? They might as well have just used a rat tail tang. And for what? So you can wrap your lanyard around the grip?

NEWS FLASH!!! The grip is for GRIPPING! The lanyard is supposed to go around your WRIST.  *NOT* around the *INSIDE* of the GRIP!!!

A full tang is supposed to provide STRENGTH!! You just don’t cut huge swathes of steel out of a full tang, just so you have a cute convenient spot for you to wrap your little kite string around! EGADS!!!!

I mean, honestly, who comes up with these things?

Kershaw Whiplash Tactical Bowie Phail – [True Swords]

No, no, no. Put your hand down, Pointdexter, I decidedly did *not* mean to say “Unidentified Flying Object”. I thought it would be a suitable heading for the knife this post is about, especially since i think it is a little… too much. It’s kinda… Well… Lets start with the picture.

Alien Spawn Fantasy Bowie

OK, before any of you say “Hey now, don’t get your knickers all atwist, Phyre, it does say it’s a fantasy Bowie…” Let me preface my objections by saying… It’s my blog and I can rant if I want to. So there. Now we’ve got the whole maturity thing (or lack thereof) out of the way, let’s begin.

I have issues with this bowie. It just feels wrong to me on so many levels. I mean, the blade is out there, all by itself, with some kind of weird wave motif, on some sort of mutant stem. The guard, coming out of some type of organic looking pod system, consists of something that looks like a chicken claw.

There are two, unequal length horns, or something, above the spine of the blade. (I mean seriously. Horns?) And the pommel looks like it is a stolen headpiece of an Aztec totem pole. The only thing I kinda liked about this knife (and when I say “like”, I mean I didn’t hate it) was the grip, which was all black, and adorned with some sort of veiny tree like pattern. I thought that was ok. The rest?… Meh.

All in all it looks to me like a failed attempt to meld aspects from the Tribal Aztec/Biomechanical/H.R. Geigeresque schools of design. And what an interesting failure it is. Of course this is just *my* opinion.You are all perfectly within your right to like it.

But I think I should also point out that you’re a dufus if you do.

Alien Spawn Fantasy Bowie – [True Swords]

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you may have heard me lamenting, on many occasions, about how some sword designers tend to take the easy route with their sword designs. Specifically, they may take a blade from one sword, graft it onto a hilt from a different sword, and sell the new combination as a completely different sword.

Personally, I find sword designs passing themselves off as something they’re not, rather dishonest. It’s like a musician plagiarizing their own work and trying to sell it to you again. I can understand that they are trying to milk every last cent of revenue out of any given sword line, but sometimes it can be a bit much, like the Punisher sword fiasco I wrote about so many moons ago.

There are, however, good ways to recycle a blade design. Basing a line of blades on the same knife profile is one way to do it, and so long as they aren’t being passed off as something else, it can be done tastefully and effectively, as the examples below demonstrate:

Flaming Bowie - Spider Motif

Flaming Bowie - Scorpion Motif

Flaming Bowie - Dragon Motif

Now the above blades are examples of knives that more or less carry the same profile. The edge grinds differ a little, however from a practical perspective, these knives all carry the same basic design, with a few minor differences. The only real differences between them is how they are furnished. Quite beautiful motifs as well, I might add.

These are essentially all full tang knives, with ornately finished scales, each with a different flame embedded motif. A Spider, a scorpion, and a dragon, in cast nickel silver, partially set into the acrylic scales of each of these knives. I’m not really a big fan of flames on knives, however in this case the effect has been quite tastefully applied. Beautiful knives all around

And all three based on the same design, without any pretense of being something they are not.

How about that!

Scorpion Flaming Bowie – [eBladeStore]
Dragon Flaming Bowie – [eBladeStore]
Spider Flaming Bowie – [eBladeStore]

You’ve probably all read or heard of the legendary city of Atlantis. Yep, yep, you know, the one about the city that like, drowned itself or something? What? That’s not what happened? Ok, ok, Fine. Maybe they didn’t drown themselves. Whatever, they’ve fallen (into the sea), and they can’t get up… Heh… I slay me…

Ok, ok, I’m sorry. It’s just that the Atlanteans are considered a joke race among us Balrogs. Seriously, what kind of dumb race destroys themselves? Oh, wait… you all are humans right… Never mind, don’t answer that… Anyhoo, legend has it that the Atlanteans were almost as powerful as we (the Maiar, of course) were…

(Yeah, I said “almost”. They’re all sleeping with the fishes now, so let’s see you prove me wrong ) At least until their rather unfortunate accident that ended in a race wide dirt water nap…

But they supposedly had some cool weapons. Perhaps nothing as cool as the stuff us fire demons cook up, but interesting nonetheless. And I think I’ve found one:

Ocean (Atlantean) Bowie

OK, so the site I found it on calls it an Ocean Bowie. But I’m sure we all know the truth. It’s just a poorly disguised Atlantean bowie. I suppose they were trying to be sensitive to the unfortunate plight of the Atlanteans, but as one of the first races to win a civilization-wide Darwin award, I wouldn’t have bothered. *cough*…

Anyway, it’s certainly an interesting blade. A single piece, full tang construction, with sea blue patterned wood scales strategically pinned on a retro futuristic profile. The blade itself is actually not bad. A couple of unnecessary cutouts and perforations on the spine and the blade, but meh.

Beneath the blade and what I’m going to call the ricasso, is an interesting blade extension, that looks a lot like a fin. From a sailfish perhaps… Except without the spines… In fact, as you would expect from an ocean themed blade there many oceanic motifs at work. The hilt is rather interesting, with integrated choils for added grip, as well as an undulating finger guard, looking like another set of fins, extending down the front three quarters of the grip.

I thought the use of the extra circular and triangular scales above the grip, and along the ricasso, added a somewhat more mechanical feel to the fishy theme. Rather unusual but certainly a good representation of what the Atlantean culture was said to be.

All in all, certainly a decent blade. Can’t really fault the Atlantean designers all that much on it. Perhaps a little too flashy for my taste, too much extraneous furniture, gills and fins and whatnot. But what would you expect from a race that drowned it it’s own bathtub?

LOL… I kid… I kid…

Maybe…

Oceanic Bowie – [eBladeStore]

For those not totally and uncompromisingly nerdy, Yes. The title of this post is relevant (scientifically, any way) to the blade we’ll be looking at today…

Scorpion Fantasy Knife

I’m just going to assume at this point that the average reader of this blog is intelligent enough to have figured out that Pandinus Imperator is the scientific name of the venerable Black Emperor Scorpion, AKA the African Emperor Scorpion. throwing “Cave”, the latin for “beware” in front should (in theory) translate to “Beware the Black Emperior Scorpion…” Neat huh? What? Hey, I thought it was cool… Whatever…

Bah humbug. Well I’m also going to assume you understand why I chose this particular title. Even though technically, it’s misleading, as the Black Emperor Scorpion is one of the most benevolent Emperors around, and is in fact, the scorpion of choice for those who keep them as pets… But If not, I apologise, but you will need to send me $50 in US currency, in order to discover the oh, so very intriguing reasons…

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I must admit to being a little surprised by the outstanding basic honesty of whoever named this blade. Unlike much of the usual black ronin samurai ninja fare i come across, “Scorpion Fantasy Knife” is comparatively simple, perhaps a little too simple. But it is straight to the point, and does not pretend to be anything it’s not. In fact they could have just gotten away with something as simple as “Black Scorpion dagger/blade” and not have sounded pretentious… But I’m just nitpicking here…

But names, both scientific and fantasy, aside, I must say I love the contours of the blade. Curves that go on for days. The entire blade profile consist of nothing but arcs of varying radii intersecting each other. Eve n the finger guard is an uninterrupted continuation of the bottom most blade arc. Just wickedly sweet looking IMHO. It’s a little bit bowie, a little bit Swords of Chaos, and all in beautiful black.

Now the hilt, weeeelll… that’s a mixed bag. As usual the designer has opted to go with the form over function school and has created a designer piece that has a rather poor grip. Too short, too much curve, all show, little go. Not that the idea wasn’t a good one. From an aesthetic perspective, they have captured the tail of the scorpion quite well. Even down the that excellently formed and placed stinger pommel.

I guess I should stop trying to evaluate artsy blades from the standpoint of practical functionality. I do like it’s looks. It’s just that the whole lack of functionality can usually be avoided without sacrificing the aesthetics. But it seems like they don’t even try. It’s a crying shame I tell ya. A crying shame…

Scorpion Fantasy Knife – [Realm Collections]

Today, I have a special treat for you. You may or may not know this, since it does not come up particularly often, but one of my favorite blade materials is Damascus steel. For two reasons. First, barring unfinished or tarnished steels, it is one of the only true “dark” finished steels that I know of.

The next reason is that, even though I have a great love for all dark weapons, (to me they have more character than most) the truth is that, most dark weapons are not inherently dark, and require special finishes, most of which rarely do any more than provide an aesthetic touch to a blade.

Damascus steel on the other hand, has an inherent dark aesthetic beauty that requires no artificial colorings or preservatives. Ok, so maybe there are some forms of Damascus that have artificial colorings. Some shades of Damascus require chemical treatments or the usage of special alloys or metals to achieve the desired effect.

But in the grand scheme of things, these are no worse than the coatings used to enhance the appearance of monosteels. Nonetheless, it is still the only type of steel that I know of, whose aesthetics are also functional, and whose enhanced cutting power does not really require any special finishes / treatments / coatings. Damascus steel has an inherent beauty all it’s own.

But the cool thing is that, in the hands of true metalworking artists, using these various other methods, Damascus can be made into patterns and colors of amazing beauty. I was quite thrilled to find a site that featured such beautifully wrought Damascus blades, each one uniquely and excellently finished to a level of detail that, much like J. A. Harkins work, totally blew me away…

I present to you a taste of the blades of Kevin and Heather Harvey of Heavin Forge. First up:

<_>

The Zulu assegai – In Damascus

[view full size]

Now obviously, as one of my favorite African weapons, this Damascus Assegai caught my eye. Definitely a thing of beauty. Due in no small part to the very eye catching Gaboon Viper Damascus pattern on the blade:

Zulu Assegai – Close up of Blade

[view full size]

Now this is a very unique spear, first because of the shaft style, which appears to have been carved to appear like a dark horn grip at the bottom, and smooths out the rest of the way up. Very cool. And the head sports a cool damscus pattern they have appropriately called called “Gaboon Viper”, as it emulates the characteristic diamond pattern found on the back of the aforementioned reptile… I’ve got two words for the head on this spear: Absolutely Awesome…

<^>

Persian Fighting Blade!

[view full size]

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, I needn’t explain to you why I like this blade… It’s all about the points and curves… (I’m sure you can figure it out… ) And it doesn’t hurt that it has a Damascus blade. Which is actually appropriate since Damascus steel is reputed to have been developed in ye old Persia and was also called watered steel at the time. No surprise, as Damascus does look like Steel with waves in it…

<^>

Next we have a piece i like to think of as from the West. The Wild West. California gold rush and and all that jazz… It should be self explanatory why:

Gold Rush Bowie

[view full size]

Yep, we have a bowie knife, perhaps almost the trademark of the wild west, (besides the ever ubiquitous revolver), in an amazing gold and almost cobalt blue Damascus hue… I’ve always like gold accents on black blades, but this just takes it to another level altogether…

Gold Rush Bowie – Close up of ricasso and top of hilt

[view full size]

There’s gold in that thar bowie!… I seen it with my own two eyes!!

<^>

Finally, but certainly not least, we find a weapon harking from the dark continent of Africa, an interesting little dagger that reminds me of an insect for some reason. A long wasp maybe? I dunno. But here is it, in all it’s insect like glory…

African Dagger

[view full size]

Now this particularly dark brand of Damascus is one of my favorites, perhaps the only true dark steel in existence. And this sample is particularly beautiful, complementing the overall theme of this dagger very well. Between the African styled hilt, and the really very cool horn sheath, it’s perhaps one of the most intriguing implementations of a Damascus dagger I’ve seen to date…

<^>

And that’s all I’ve got for today. You can see more of Kevin and Heathers’ work at Heavin Forge. Perhaps what really impressed me was not only the creative use of color in the steel, but also the overall attention to detail, fit and finish on every weapon. Absolutely beautiful. Make sure you swing by their page.

As much as they were all great works of art, after looking at them all, I discovered I had a favorite. Probably because I tend to gravitate towards more dark colors and organic shapes, I liked that last waspy dagger best. It just spoke to me. We had a grand old chat.

I think I’m gonna give it a name. I’m calling it the Black Stinger… Yeah… In fact I think i’m gonna have to make myself similar blade one of these days. It won’t be nearly as cool as this one, but If it has half the personality, I’ll be looking forward to quite a few great conversations with it…

P.S. I’d like to point out, for the record, that I am not insane. Just a *wee bit* loopy when it comes to certain blades… But I’m totally harmless, I assure you… No really…

Kevin and Heathers Damascus Blades – [Heavin Forge]

Given the rant I went on my last post, I thought it quite appropriate that i should happen to run into the following blade while browsing through some of the pics I had in my archives:

Paratrax Bowie

[view full size]

IMHO this is, a more practical example of a multi function blade. While it retains a good amount of flexibility, it has a basic design focus, and does not deviate very far from it’s origins. At heart, this is still a bowie knife, and it shows.

I will admit that this is a different kind of weapon intended for a different purpose than the last one posted about. However I think this one fulfills it’s niche in a much better fashion. It incorporates the saw blade spine like the last one, a serviceable point (this point design is not the best, but is still only a minor weakness) a deep belly for chopping and skinning, and a straight edge section of blade for cutting and so on. And all of this while still retaining the trademark bowie blade heavy design.

Not only that, but the grip is actually a much more ergonomic than the last, and this comes with a secondary little utility blade. Minor points, I know, but it all adds up. The point is, as a general purpose utility/survival blade, this fulfills it’s role much better than the hacked machete of my last post.

Ok, it’s spent rant nap time for me…

Paratrax Bowie – [True Swords]