Odd No. 5 Bayonet

I picked up this No. 5 bayonet at a recent show. I don't know what to make of it. The workmanship is pretty good for it being a repro. The bayonet is unmarked, save for some rack numbers pressed into the wood grips. No maker mark, no subcontractor or viewer's marks anywhere. The scabbard throat seems a little too thick for wartime British, but isn't the thick post-war brass throat either.

I wonder if it wasn't reworked in a foreign country or perhaps a commercial piece sold with the Sterling sub machinegun. My copy of Skennerton is not accessible, so I haven't been able to do as much research as I would have liked before posting for assistance.

That's kind of like the one my friend got. I made a post on it. I believe consensus was it was legit.

I'll say it again here, no clean out hole. In my learnings over the years, that is a dead giveaway it is a repro. Seems such a small thing but all the known legit ones have it. All the known fakes don't. And it's incredibly easy to put one there. I did one myself years back. Other than that and the fact is has no makers marks, just like the other one, it looks real good.

Scabbard looks like an FN scabbard. It's even still black painted for parade.
There's something about the angle of the point that's different about the #5 scabbard...

I guess the question is where are these at least old looking numbers stamped in wood No5s coming from?

According to Ian Skennerton's book, pages 253 & 254, most commercial No5 bayonets did not have clearance holes in the pommel, although some examples had "witness marks" where the hole would have gone. It also states that wood, plastic and sheet metal grips have been observed retained by rivets or screws.

Why not take the grips off and see if the cross piece is pinned in position or welded and if there are any markings on the tang?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flying10uk

sheet metal grips

---

Peter spoke of refurbing a few like that, or examining them... It would make sense if FN was in the system by then...

Little known fact, related to me by James Edmiston a few weeks ago, that Sterling made the metal grips for their hybrid No5 bayonets. Sterling hybrids consisted of an L1A1 blade with rivetted in place No5 cross-piece and pommell. As a result of this, Enfield contracted Sterling to manufacture the L1A1 grips - which they'd copied in the first place!

We never had steel grip No5 bayonets in the Army. L:1 type, yes. No5, no.

As for the clearance hole, Sterling didn't do this unless it was specified in the contract. There's a bit more to this and I'll come back when I have spoken to James again to get the facts right..........

Scabbards were pretty cheap to make. Just .035" or so thickness 1" o/d tube, last 1.5"(?) rolled to a taper through die rollers then fed into parallel rollers, gradually stepped down until it comes out the typical scabbard shape. Braze button and that's it. So cheap that Sterling never considered in-house manufacture

Thanks for all of the thoughts and info. I had no idea that FN produced No. 5 scabbards.

I am in temporary housing, so don't have the tools needed to properly remove the grips (someone has already buggered the grip screws a bit already). I just relocated from California to Texas. My collection and most of my reference library are packed into a shipping container. I picked this up Saturday at a gun show in Ft. Worth pretty cheap. I have a marked Sterling bayonet, but couldn't compare since it is in storage with the rest. I am pretty comfortable that it is not a repro. It is a commercial Sterling variant from the period prior to institution of the "windowpane" blade marking that was actually sold and used somewhere (e.g., some third world country police force or ?).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by marysdad

I had no idea that FN produced No. 5 scabbards.

---

Not quite how I meant to say it. I meant that it looked like an L1A1 bayonet scabbard as they interchange. Here we see scads of them clad in FN C1 A1 scabbards as that was what was easily available and usually in better shape physically. The pointed end is a slight different profile...says me...

Is the retaining spring in the No5 different to the FN spring. It surely MUST be because whereas the FL blade is double edged and pretty flat (there's probably a name for the shape....) the No5 is single edged and had a channel into which the spring fits and retains the blade.

I mentioned some time ago we used a 'fake' blade from India to test the metallurgy against one of ours and while it wasn't exactly the same, it was so close as to be certainly in the same formula - or as close as you might get within a mixing formula as they called it! Mind you,we weren't in a position to know whether our 'fake' was a real Indian 'fake' or an Indian unmarked RFI.

To my tired old eyes, the bayonet looks like a real No5 that someone has polished down to the bare steel and then neglected.

But a word of warning for anyone that wants to set about drilling the clearance hole. The hole crosses the pommel end of the actual tang of the BLADE part of the bayonet - where the actual tough blade abuts up against the pommel. If you drill down through, half way through, the tip of the drill will break through the pommel and onto a half section of tough blade material which will deflect the drill bit and send it off course as sure as eggs is eggs. A lesson learned at Sterling when converting bought-in bayonets to military/customer spec. If yo do this, bore down to the tang of the blade then use an end mill to bore the half diameter of the tang. When it's through, continue with a drill bit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

Is the retaining spring in the No5 different to the FN spring. It surely MUST be because whereas the FL blade is double edged and pretty flat (there's probably a name for the shape....) the No5 is single edged and had a channel into which the spring fits and retains the blade.

---

The blade shape is close enough that I was able to interchange them without much effort, beyond the passing through locking nubs on the retaining spring. They do have the same basic shape... #5 has a wider fuller, more pronounced false edge. The FN bayonet has a somewhat thicker blade. Both have only one way to fit into the scabbard.

I have one of these unmarked bayonets, believe it to be one of the commercial Sterling bayonets.

The other Sterling bayonet has metal grips & is etched with Sterling on the blade

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by browningautorifle

Not quite how I meant to say it. I meant that it looked like an L1A1 bayonet scabbard as they interchange. Here we see scads of them clad in FN C1 A1 scabbards as that was what was easily available and usually in better shape physically. The pointed end is a slight different profile...says me...

---

That makes perfect sense. I didn't make the connection to the L1 Series bayonets, which used a similar scabbard.