Bowie

The Complete Encyclopedia of Arms & Weapons, edited by Leonid Tarassuk & Claude Blair, defines a bowie knife as:

A hunting knife having a long blade with a cutting edge and a false cutting edge, a short hilt with the arms often ending in knobs, and a grip with wooden or horn sidepieces...It is...thought that Rezin Bowie produced a more advanced model of this knife in about 1830, with the help of a blacksmith from Arkansas by the name of James Black.

That's the most common description of a bowie knife, and a quick Google image search turned this up:



You can by the knife in the picture here.

According to Rezin Bowie, the first knife he gave to his brother was, "The length of the blade was nine and one-quarters inches, its width one and one-half inches, single edged and not curved."

Thanks to this excellent paper about Bowie's knife, I found this picture of an earlier style Bowie knife:



Over time, Rezin's knives started to take the more famous Bowie knife conformation. There are a few that James Black theoretically made for or with Rezin, including this one:



There are more pictures, and a more thorough history, at the paper I linked earlier.

Since everyone (Americans, at least) associates those knives with Jim Bowie, there have been a number of people who have picked up one of my father's knives, then dismissed it as "not period" because it's a Bowie knife.

The knife in question:



The problem is that Rezin Bowie and James Black were not the first blacksmiths to make knives that look like what we now call Bowie knives. To wit:



Seax blades. They've been found in digs dating from the 400's to the 1000's. There's good information on them here, as well as stuff about other weapons, as well.

I'm going to try to get back on a better posting schedule. I've still got a question to answer (sadly, I don't have much background in military history, so it's taking me a long time).

I'm also coming up with topics to post. I definitely need more information on the using of weapons, and I'm working on that. If there's anything you'd like to hear about, let me know.