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USMC Hospital Corps bolo


robinb
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I have 2 variations of the PLUMB made Hospital Corps bolo. The variation is the way the wooden grips are secured to the tang. One has 4 brass pins, while the other has 10 screws, five on each side. The screws are recessed into the wood, and either wood plugs or some other material has been placed over them and ground flush. The way I can tell that they are screws is that a very small piece of wood has chipped off where one screw is close to the edge, and I can see the threads. It's an interesting way to secure grips, as the 10 screws are not directly across from each other, but slightly off set. Does anyone else have a PLUMB bolo to compare with?

 

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Interesting: those two methods mimic two common ways of fastening planks on wooden boat hulls: in one method the screw heads are set below the surface (countersunk) and the holes filled with wooden plugs called bungs. The other method uses rivets set flush with the surface of the wood. On the bolo handle the rivets would seem the much better choice. Bungs - or any other means of plugging the screw holes - can come loose and because of the countersinking the screws are holding a thinner section of wood than the rivets. On boats with very thin planks, such as canoes, rivets are always used. Also, the screws require more labor.

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Robin,

 

Your Corpsman Knife with the four brass pins is thought to be a pre-WWII specimen. Notice that the point is more blunt that the other one; also, the tang cut is just like the one from the square tip USMC Intrenching Machetes. Yet, another way to attach the wood to the metal is with three large pins (screws?) like the one seen on my Chatillon Corpsman Knife (see picture attached).

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