You Might Understand Where I’m Coming From

I needed another Bowie fix. It’s in the name after all — I am a junkie.

Any single Bowie knife I own is more than I need to live the rest of my life in good shape as far as large clip point knives are concerned.

And yet, I still needed a fix, so I turned it into a matter research to validate the unjustified purchase I sensed welling up. I wondered, “How does a knife that costs 1/10 of my most expensive Bowie — the Bark River Knives Shining Mountain — compare or hold up to abuse?”

The BRK alternative I was eyeing up was the Rough Rider Black Mule Bowie, a rubber handled knife with a blade shaped like the Shining Mountain Bowie. Why not? I have many Rough Rider slip joints that are excellent for the price, and folders are more complicated to make than fixed blades, so it stands to reason that a RR fixie should be pretty great for the price and therefore, money well spent… I pumped myself up.

After viewing a few positive YouTube reviews I pulled the trigger and the Black Mule Bowie was here in two days, thanks SMKW.com!

I took the knife out to the stump where I baton fire wood on and went to town on the Mule, tiddlywinking it into the stump, slamming it sidewise through lengths of treelimb and batoning it through knotty, kiln-dried wood trying to dull or ding the perfectly ground 3CR13 blade… you read that right, the blade steel is 3CR.

After a good 45 minutes I had yet to succeed in doing any damage to anything but the quartered logs, having lain waste to a small pile of grocery store wood.

What’s the lesson? It’s all about the heat treat and the geometry.

Rough Rider, a Smokey Mountain Knife Works brand, really makes the most out of the budget steels it uses by paying attention to the best heat treat possible while also being meticulous with the bevel and edge grinds. (We have always seen this with Cold Steel as well.)

Geometry + Heat Treat = Superior Performance. And that’s about the extent of my math knowledge.

Stay tuned for more knife musings and updates, and thanks for being a subscriber!

Bob

P.S. The latest podcast went live today. See below for both audio and video.

The Knife Junkie Podcast (Episode 366)

Today’s podcast (episode 366) is a replay of my time from the 24-hour marathon of knife content on Nov. 4-5 during the Knives Live 2022 livestream. My content from Knives Live — and this podcast replay — is with Doug Ritter of Knife Rights and Cary Orefice of Off-Grid Knives (affiliate link).

Support Knife Rights

Knife Rights is America’s grassroots knife owners’ organization; leading the fight to Rewrite Knife Law in America™ and forging a Sharper Future for all Americans™. Knife Rights efforts have resulted in 39 bills enacted repealing knife bans in 25 states and over 150 cities and towns since 2010.

Support Knife Rights with a donation (https://kniferights.org/donate) or join Knife Rights (https://kniferights.org/membership). You can also support Knife Rights while shopping on Amazon (for any products) with AmazonSmile. Just go to smile.amazon.com/ch/74-3197994 for all your shopping on Amazon!