Bladecatcher feature on back of bowie.

[nine9jack9]

A few years ago at Blade I happened upon a D.E. Henry bowie. It is always interesting to see custom knives from that period stretching from the 50's and 60's. A parallel can be seen in custom 1911 pistols by Swenson, Clark, etc. for you gun guys. The design feature that fascinated me was a piece of brass that looked to be silver soldered into a dovetail cut on the back of the blade. I have read about this feature that was designed to catch another blades edge. My question is: would silver soldering the back have made it soft and if so, was this desireable? Another execution of this feature I have seen is a piece of folded over brass on the back of the blade, would this have needed to be silver soldered as well? Thanks in advance for any info.

 

[stezann]

Big bowie blade spine will be often draw temper with a torch anyway. There are different melt temperature solder alloys...not a concern.

 

[LRB]

As said, no harm with most common solders. A silver braze might be too much, but not the lower temp silver bearing solders.