From the forges of United Cutlery, we bring you, the Honshu Boshin Bowie Review.
Here’s a bit of basic info for you. Its made of 7CR13 stainless steel. Its got an oversized, but not enormous rubberised handle. Its got a 9 1/2 inch blade and is 15 1/4 inches overall. It costs around £45.
I consider aesthetics quite a lot when I’m browsing, but you often find that the cheaper knives are often less than appealing. So when I saw this knife, it was like finding out that the girl next door grew up to be a supermodel, and still has a crush on you. I had to have it and immediately started looking online for the best deal.
This is the only bowie knife I currently own, although there are one or two that I’m keeping my eye on, but I generally avoid bowie knives. I tend to dislike their shape and I usually consider them too bulky for most of my general tasks. They do make very good camp knives due to their ability to do many tasks with great effectiveness but their size usually brings weight and for smaller tasks they fall short. This knife however is not very heavy, especially for its size. ‘ Its also incredibly well-balanced making for an agile and effortless feel. Beyond this though, and I really tried to find great things to talk about with this knife, it is very disappointing.
So I’ll grudgingly get on with pointing out its many flaws as a functional knife.
The handle looks great and its shape does make for a very nice secure feel. It is rubberised for added security but you feel blisters appearing just touching it, let alone using it for any amount of time. Then they added a lanyard hole to help secure the blade for chopping but you even need to try doing this to know that it just isn’t that kind of knife. Also while the sheath looks and fees heavy-duty the outer layers quickly started peeling away when removing and inserting the blade.
I think a good bowie should be a good chopper, and while the curve of the body suggests it would do this with ease, you would be a fool to try. The hollow grind makes the edge so thin that it wont last many outings before needing some serious repair. While the knife is light enough to wield, with ease the thick spine would wedge it in place , so without the weight it actually loses the ability to penetrate effectively. The tip of the blade is also less pointed than one would expect, as if they knew it would break, so they just removed the original point and blended it into the spine. It does have a nice choke point on the blade but again you feel that this is more for form than function. Then there’s the ‘blood grooves’, which is what United Cutlery advertise them as, and this is where you really start to understand what this knife is about. When you call it a blood groove instead of a fuller, you are just trying to make the knife seem hardcore, when really it’s a topless cuddle at best. But the BLOOD GROOVES, and I will admit this is my O.C.D. whining again, are not symmetrical. One curves with the body and the other curves with the spine, and when you make something look this pretty its disappointing that they would do this.
So this thing looks like a bowie but really it performs like smaller knife. 
You could whittle a spoon with it, no wait you can’t, because its far to large for the delicate work that it’s clearly only capable of. I suppose if you want to look cool while cutting up some meat this would work, and I dare say you could sharpen some sticks for whatever your particular reason required, but honestly a knife half the size for half the price would do this much better.
If it broke, would I buy another one?
No. I do like collecting blades but, for me at least, they really need to be practical.
This then, is a supermodel that only looks good with make-up on.