Just about finished with this one, just a little cleanup left.    I'm doing my first gun & knife show in Muscle Shoels, Al at the end of this month.  This is the last "nice" knife I'll have made for the show.

It was forged from 2 different saw blades and one old file.  The guard was forged from the bearing retainer pictured and the handle is buckeye burle.  It's not perfect, I missed it when I forged the handle out a little to thin and I may take a little off that guard.  I'm almost happy with the blade.

Great looking bowie!  I agree...take a little off the guard.  Love that buckeye burl.  The wood complements the pattern weld very well.

The knife looks good. But I agree it would look better with the guard downsized some. The thinner handle could be a plus for someone with smaller hands. The only thing I see about the blade that seems at all off is the tip... it looks kinda rounded.

I love them big old-school guards. Very nice work.

Dave

Gorgeous. Scrap never looked better.

Definitely a good bit "recycling" that scrap metal!

 

The first thing I noticed about the knife was the guard.  Guards are hard to fit to knives because they act as visual break-points in how the lines of the blade flow into the handle.  As such, they can either make or break an otherwise good design.  In this case, I'd say that the billboard of a guard seriously detracts from the overall look.

 

The tip of the knife certainly stands out as something "off".

 

The guard might be able to be fixed with some simply decorative filing around the perimeter to make it something other than bland brass, maybe duplicating what you did on the handle tang to tie it all together.  I would still recommend it be trimmed a bit, though.

 

Great damascus.  I really like random patterns.

I did trim the guard a bit.  The tip is a bit of an optical illusion, that and I don't like to run the tip out real thin.  Idk, I just expect the blade to be abused and a real thin tip is just asking to be broke. <_<