L1A1. The pommel and cross piece are rivetted on later. They didn't refurbish for us but they did supply new. They also used these blades to make new No5 bayonets for Sterling. That's why the 'fake' Sterling bayonets have L1A1 steel grips. To be perfectly honest, pressed steel grips for our No5 bayonets would have made perfect sense in a production engineering world where commonality = cheapness. Alas, the L1 series blade part is totally different to the No5 type blade
Last edited by Peter Laidler; 08-19-2016 at 04:13 PM.
Earlier this evening I was looking on a dealer's website concerning something else and totally by chance I happened to notice that they had a 1970s L1A1 bayonet by Hopkinson for sale. They described this as being very rare because of it's long fuller and because of it being "waisted" which presumably justified it's price tag of over £300.
Long, shorter fuller, waisted or straight X-pieces, hollow ground of straight ground made absolutely no difference to us whatsoever. All types were common in service and were described in the V-150 EMER as permissible agreed variations in order for (outside) contractors to make best use of their manufacturing facilities - or words something like that. That's why you see non ROF bayonets with these variations
There was only one sort of L1 type bayonet that did cause us some trouble when encountered that is rarer than the others.
For anyone who may like to take look at this "rare" L1A1 bayonet priced at £325 inc U.K. postage it is still currently available on J.C. militaria's website. I may have an example myself as I do have several L1A1 bayonets but I won't have paid more than about £65 for it if I do.
I wish the cruciform were that common, the only ones you saw at one time were the fakes, as most of the originals were apparently sent to Canada and then destroyed. A couple of years ago a lot became available and were rapidly snapped up once their authenticity was confirmed. As for the No7's there is also a red handled one in which the cloth is very apparent, not an official variation just lean production methods in the original production runs.
Here are some pictures of my black grip No7 bayonet which is a fairly new arrival. The pommel is marked M47A indicating BSA manufacture, presumably, the entire bayonet and not just the pommel.
One of the more entertaining machine operations i have ever seen is that for making STANAG / M-16 mags.
I don't have any pix because we were not allowed to take any, or even carry cameras inside the facility.
However:
Start with a big roll of the appropriate metal and punch some "starter" notches on both sides of the "tail"
Feed this into a set of guides and "toothed" rollers and hit the start switch.
The material is fed through a series of stamping stations that start with "blanking, ( basic outline forming) and move on from there. The trick is that the "blank" sides are NOT shorn (sheared?) away from the tractor-fed sheet but held by numerous tabs like sprues on an injection moulding.
Thus, synchronised by the tractor feed (VERY like your Daisy-Wheel printer, circa 1970's) the "panels" are subjected to various punching / stamping operations, like the forming of the guide-ribs, folding the front and rear edges, forming the feed lips and mag-latch feature, etc.
At the final station, the finished sides are punched clear of the well-perforated parent metal sheet and dropped into appropriate bins, ready to be inspected and then jigged up for the assembly welding operation, de-burring and surface coating.
Meanwhile, automatic spring 'winders", something like this one;
are spitting out completed springs by the truck-load.
PM
