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Knife Build from a PAL 1943 dated M3 Blade


thorin6
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Some time ago I posted pictures of this M3 blade that I found at a flea market cheap.  It turned out to be an US M3 PAL 1943 marked blade, so I set about to build a knife out of the blade.  While I thought about getting the guard, pommel and leather washers to put it into its original configuration, after reading Greg Aloisio's book on Knuckle Knives I decided to put it onto a set of Model 1918 Mark I trench knife knuckle handle.  Greg shows several examples of M3 blades with M1918 knuckles, and one of them is a PAL marked blade.  I did not want to use an original set of knuckles, as they are hard to find, tend to be expensive, and I was going to alter the knuckles to fit the M8 scabbard such as would be used in Airborne units.  I was able to find a satisfactory set of knuckles on ebay; the seller listed them as original, but if you go to Frank Trzaska's site and look up reproduction M1918 Mark 1s, you will see that it is shown as item 11 on his reproduction page.  I didn't like the reproductions sold by several outlets, and the metal used was not brass but brass plated metal of indeterminate type.  Once I had the knuckles I bought a reproduction skull-crusher nut and set about working.  The blade required a lot of filing and measuring to fit the knuckles, and it was all hand work as I didn't want to remove too much material at any one time.  The real fun came with forming the end into a threaded portion to fit the nut onto.  I have a tap and die set with the thread right for the nut, and several days ago finally finished the blade and installed it into the knuckles and put on the nut.  The next set was removing one side of the guard so it would fit into the M8 scabbard.  For the scabbard I picked one of my unused M8 scabbards that had been modified by replacing the retaining strap with two sections to make it larger.  Here is the result.

First the original blade, and then the knife in the scabbard.PalBladeA.jpg.d34aa9ad319c8e5a39773ebc34028e4d.jpg1257254895_PalKnucksA.jpg.4dbb4d41f28d22b40b03807d97ca9e2b.jpg

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I still will be working on aging the knuckles as their condition doesn't match the blade that well, but that will be in the future.

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Misfit 45

That looks great! It reminds me of the knives made by the guys in Vietnam.  They would use repro 1918 handles and put them on Mk 2 blades.  Good job.

Marv

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I believe the reproduction M1918 handles from the 1960s were made in Japan, while most of the recent reproductions come from China.

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