I knew someone who had, literally, and I kid you not, two 44 gallon barrels FULL of scabbards of EVERY kind ever dreamed up by man. There were steel mouthpieces, alloy mouthpieces and every other variation................ We used to indent for these scabbards by the 50 or so via the control and planning people at Ordnance to use for the frog buttons that would be skimmed down and used to repair No5/7/9/L1A1 etc etc scabbards that would come in missing them during the WORP programmes. An easy fix virtually for free.

I often used to wonder what on earth possessed the MoS to stick to the tapered format of the scabbards. Parallel tube would have sufficed - the mouthpiece and spring would still fit, the machined ball at the end could have been replaced by a punched steel cup and..................... I mean.............. xxxxxxg hell...., they all started as parallel tubes in any case!