1917 Remington Bayonets and scabbards

[dave307]

Here are some different Remington 1917 finishes on the blade and some different color scabbard you might see. The bayonet with the brown scabbard is mint. What a beauty ,the finish is like a polished silver color which is I believe is the blued blade finish. This is not sandblasted to a dull gray that some books say was the finish. The brown scabbard is a first pattern with the leather frog. It has M.S. (maxim silencer ? )stamped on the throat and G F ( Graton Knight ) on the ferrule. The body is only marked with the inspectors mark. The brown finish is over the standard green. I just wanted to add that I think maybe this brown finish was a type of clear coating that was applied to the green body that then turned brown with age. Maybe thats why it was stopped and you don't see to many. It doesn't look like a paint over which is what the black scabbard one is. Any thoughts on this are welcome. I included some pictures of the normal colored scabbard and bayonet for comparison. The other bayonet is a 1913 4-17 Remington contract bayonet for the British without the clean out hole. This one has a dull grey finish. Maybe this was later refinished but being without the clean out hole that leaves this in doubt. Any thoughts on this are welcome. Was this the finish used on the British Remington blades? or just a later refinishing ? I threw in a picture of a ww 2 scabbard just for fun and to show what the stampings on the throat look like.

 

[dave307]

Some more pictures

[dave307]

[dave307]

I just wanted to add that maybe the 1917 bayonets were sandblasted to a dull grey. I just have a hard time with this description because it doesn't look like it to me.I just got this bayonet and this has the nicest finish of all my bayonets and knives. Definitely a keeper that I will never sell.

[bladelover]

I just bought a 1905 bayonet to put in a 1917 scabbard, representing the secondary standard concept. It is a SA 1905 1911 but the blade pristine. Likely it was rehabilitated for WW II. The blade is gray, some might call it sandblasted but I think it is parkerized as are some of my WW II rifles. Parkerization would be a concept often used on military arms of the period.

Jeff

[Misfit 45]

Hi,

Very nice collection. First, I would recommend the book The U.S. Enfield Bayonet by Daniel Jay Morrison. He has a long chapter on scabbards that I will have to examine to find out the answer about the brown scabbard you have.

 

Interestingly, the chapter on "Finishes" is only a couple pages long. Remington's production of British and US P13s and M1917s used the same finish all the way up to September 1918. They started out with the blades finished bright and polished and sandblasted. Then the whole thing was placed in an acid bath which produced a matte finish. (Sometimes you can see an almost pitted surface to the blade as a result of the acid.)

 

Then the bayonets were stood up vertically in oil deep enough to cover the blade but expose the ricasso and handle. Then the oil bath container with the bayonets were placed in a steam cabinet to "rust blue" all the exposed parts. Winchester never deviated from this process. Remington changed to the process used by the "Parker Rust Proof Company". starting in Sept. 1918.

 

If untouched, the bayonets made before that date will have the blued ricasso. After WWI, thousands were refinished with the parkerizing process with the expected variation of gray colors. The earliest refinished blades, however, had a very dark smooth color. The 1960s made M1917 (Vietnam) had a sparkle look to the parkerizing.

 

I'll look to see what can be found about the treatment of the scabbards that might turn them brown over the years.

Marv

[KRIS FORD]

I love these bayos for the simple fact that they could be attached to a shotgun! (big trench gun lover here!!) My kind of weapon set up!

 

Parker Rust-Proof company, another Detroit original! (licensed elsewhere, only original facility left is the Parker Rust-Proof Company of Cleveland.)

 

Great period read here!

https://ia801700.us.archive.org/24/items/ParkerRust-proofingProcess/ParkerRust-proofCompanyOfAmerica_cca42363.pdf

 

(for those who like to dork out to tech manual type stuff like myself, I guess that's what 22 years in a factory will do to ya LOL!)

 

But all of the GI stuff that was parked would have been through a very similar operation, so I think it's cool as heck.