1891 Argentine bayonet

Just picked up a brass handled 1891 Argentine bayo. As I have found out is common the Argentine stamp is ground off. A shame as the rest of the blade is near perfect. What kind of steel did they use to have it looking so good after 100 years? What I call the crossgaurd is a little rusty, the brass looks polished and very smooth. The blade and scabbord has matching serial numbers. This is the first one I've bought with matching numbers. I haven't been able to find a picture of one with the frog though so I don't know what one would look like. The guy that sold it said the brass was for the navy but different websites have contradicted this. I saw some pictures of ones with the stamp intact. Are these common?

The ground ones were the early ones on the market, more recently most I have seen have full crests, and there are two different sizes as well i think

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Originally Posted by tlitt

.................. What kind of steel did they use to have it looking so good after 100 years? What I call the crossgaurd is a little rusty, the brass looks polished and very smooth.

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It was a high quality carbon steel, but really nothing special. Unlike some South American countries, the Argentine military was well trained and under very good discipline and simply took good care of it's equipment in use and maintained it well in storage.