Great War Artifacts: Bayonets, Scabbards, and Frogs

This is where it all began. Over forty years ago a friend of my mother's gave me her father's old triangular bayonet. I recall she said he had worn it in the Boer War. This bayonet is earlier than that, though her father was old, but whatever it's origin it was a stunning gift to a thirteen year old, then crazy about the Napoleonic wars.

This is the old classic, above, the Lee Enfield 17" bayonet. I've got a feeling this one was spray painted silver at some point, perhaps to be a Roman sword in a school play. What strikes me about it is that when the blade is drawn the steel sings. The sound is identical to the sound made 100 years ago. It is like listening to an old wax cylinder of the past.

Here are more pictures and details. 

The entrenching tool handle, or helve, will eventually be joined to the frog.

Here, above and below, are proofing marks.

The next bayonet, borrowed from another friend, is the earlier Lee Metford. This appears in my Oliver Pattern photos from the 1890s. The scabbard is like a shorter version of the Lee Enfield's. The frog has an extra loop worked into the leather for a "trenching" tool. I gather this is a particular Canadian detail.

I made careful measurements of this and created my own prototype mock-up. Then, along with photos, a package was sent to the reproduction company What Price Glory to enable them to do a reproduction. Below is my effort and the reproduction that came of it.

Here is a detail of the layering of the leather.

Another frog that I'm borrowing is shown below. It's Canadian of the 1880s as well as I can identify it with an online search ( meaning I really don't know ).  According to the pictures it takes the same bayonet as seen above.

As I've said I enjoy the unexpectedness of discovery. I was talking with a cabinetry customer of mine one day and he admitted to having an old bayonet. His family had used it for fifty years to dig up dandelions. ( Do I detect survival due to civilian use here? What else would one do with an old bayonet but use it to dig up dandelions?)

Basically, for a trade, I liberated it from the garden gnomes. Here it is amazingly unspoiled.

This is the notorious Ross bayonet which wouldn't go through a German greatcoat and which attached to the rifle which jammed in the mud of Flanders.

The hole on the back loop of the combined scabbard / frog is roughly made. I've seen such holes many times. I presume scabbards were stored hanging on nails, perhaps for quick self-defense in a surprise trench raid, or against rats,....or against dandelions. Note the same hole in the previous frog.

These details show the Ross Company stamp, and a date ( 1909 ) and "C" broad arrow on the leather of the scabbard.

Here I compare this Canadian bayonet with the British Lee Enfield. They certainly have different levels of lethality, if I can create such a word.

The backdrop to all these photos is the VERY large backpack of the previous posting,

And finally the bayonet and scabbard join the entrenching tool handle in the frog. This frog is one I made a few years ago out of old bits. I saw one of these for sale once for almost $400. These are rare because there's nothing else to do with them.