If you haven't bought the latest True West magazine, you need to find one. As you may know, singer Phil Collins' hobby way everything Alamo. He has donated all of his collection to the Alamo museum, including the actual Bowie knife owned by Jim Bowie. Notice the brass "pary" strip.In addition, he had a very interesting little folding boot knife, and a wicked pole-ax supposedly used by the Mexican Army. Anyway, some really cool and interesting stuff.

Pap

The battle over whether the "real" Bowie knife is the "REAL" Bowie knife is gonna get hot!!!

It is a cool knife, of which I'm certain you will be seeing copies appearing shortly. I find the handle interesting, sort of a Border Patrol-ish shape to it.

Thanks for showing those pictures Pap. That is one great looking knife.

Right--there "ain't no way" to identify "the" Jim Bowie knife, or even "a" Jim Bowie knife among all the candidates out there.

Also--I have been accumulating information about the authenticity of the brass strip as a feature on bowie knives, and frankly at this point think it is bogus. More on this when and if I get the information pulled together and written up.

Still--I'm grateful that you alerted us to the magazine, and I will look for it on the magazine stand to add to my trove of stuff about antique bowie knives.

Larry

Hey Rob, it has already been taken care of: Link

Mike--

I picked up the True West magazine, and also recall that one of the CBS programs (maybe Sunday Morning or 60 Minutes) had a feature on Phil Collins and worked he collection of things "Alamo" into it.

Just for information, the guys in the antique bowie knife community have long been familiar with this particular knife and simply do not give it any credence as being from the time frame or having any provable connection to Jim Bowie. I won't share the exact words of one response here, but in essence he said he could not understand why the Alamo accepted these donations!

Also, I have not and neither have any of the long-time collectors of antique bowie knives ever seen an authentic antique knife with the brass strip on the blade. This whole concept seems to have derived from Raymond Thorpe's book that was published in 1948, and the fictional embellishment that was done by Wellman in his "Iron Mistress" amplified the idea--Together they seem to have caused the general public to think that a genuine bowie knife had to have a brass strip, and thence RMK, Ruana, Cooper, and maybe others simply worked to satisfy this expectation.

For his part, Thorpe did provide two instances where such old knives were reportedly outfitted with the brass strip. One was a knife that someone wrote information about that was supposed to have been involved in a trade in about 1853 (if my memory serves). Two others were supposed to have been examined by Thorpe sometime around World War I and he put a few sketches of them in his book.

What the collectors (who have examined literally thousands of knives between them over the decades) ask is: "If there were brass-backed bowies in the 1800's, then why haven't any of them survived and shown up? Indeed, why aren't there perhaps 100's of them around like the many knives that survived that do not have brass backs."

As for the ones that people try to get knowledgeable collectors to accept as genuinely old--They should allow their knives to be subjected to radio carbon dating of the wood handles, and spectrographic analysis of the alloys in the steel, brass, and solder--otherwise, these knives will continue to be suspect. Chances are that the materials in these knives would turn out to be much more modern than the 1830's to the 1850's.

So--cutting to the chase, I won't be going back to the Alamo to see the newly acquired knife.

Larry