Mauser bayonet/knife conversion project

Re-purposing old bayonets can be fun. Though I'm kinda glad you didn't do it to a Krag bayonet...
I had a coffee can of old MK4 bayonet blades, no handles, that a guy gave me 25+ years ago. The worst of them I re-ground into a broken back saxe profile and then handled with deer leg bone. One went to a nephew, one to my daughter and I kept one for myself. On the handles I scrimshawed their names in Elder Futhark runes.

AeroDillo

Anybody else done similar?

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Kind of. Closest I could come to that is a couple of bayonets my brother gave me years ago. They were surplus West German manufacture for the M14 and the M16. Didn't really need them as bayonets but thought they might make for decent camping/utility knives so I sawed of the barrel mount ring, filed/sanded down the rest of the guard, and then cold blued the exposed metal.

Not yet. but I have a SIG AMT bayonet I've been thinking would make a neat medieval dagger.....and I just got a small hatchet form my father-in-law's stuff that I plan on turning into a skegaxe.

Y'all might want to do a search for what RC did to some M3-4-5-6-7 blades. Gosh, I miss him.

That Br-auser bayonet looks Br-itish now, sort of like one of their "bowie" style blades.

Still like those ringless M6 and 7's. I used an unmodified M5A1 for a camp knife as a kid and in high school stuck it on my JROTC M-1 Garand for bayonet training. Then I found out that a garunteed "High Security Lock" that cost a lot at the storage place my M5A1 was in between moves meant they gave you a new lock when the old one was torch cut off and not that they replaced all your stolen stuff.....like anyone could replace an old buddy like my M5A1.

When the Swiss Double edge bayos first came in and were reasonably priced I look one over and could not figure at the table how to get one apart and have regreted walking away every since.

I took apart on of those little replica HJ knives with the intent of polishing the acid etching off the blade and rehilting and found that the tang was a stub bent into a hook shape that wrapped around the forward rivet that held on the grip panels. I had plans for that butter knife blade from Soligen that as a result never materialized. I had bought it labled as a camp knife in Gatlingberg TN as a 12 year old and had no idea what it was. The "jewel" was removed from the grip and a flat bit of plastic red on one side and white on the other was in the diamond shaped hole for the "jewel" I had no Idea what the text on the blade was until like my senior year in high school. Despite having the stub tang it had stayed together well and taken and held a good edge until I disassembled it. Imagine my surprise when the German Army Kampf Messer of my first tour in Germany as a soldier turned out to be almost exactly what I was trying to make of that HJ knife!

-kBob

AeroDillo said:

Something I've been picking at in my spare time this week. I was actually hunting a beater U.S. Krag bayonet for a like project, but ran across a batch of fair-to-middling Brazilian pigstickers for a reasonable price. Hence...whatever this is.

The blade measures a shade over six inches. Most of the shaping to this point has been with the grinding wheel (as an aside, the bowie profile looks a little odd on a blade this size). Initially, I was looking at removing that curved piece of handguard, though it's since grown on me. I probably won't do much with the back end.

View attachment 765356

It's not quite done yet. Still needs some file work and new scales, and right now I doubt it'd cut butter. I also need to consult with one of my associates to see about having a sheath made.

Anybody else done similar?

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It's still a nice looking fixed blade knife!