Us M9 LAN-CAY

[Walkwolf]

Below are a few pics of my LanCay M9 - this one is an unissued early type
bayonet with a 'product improved' sheath from 1994, just cleaned
of cosmoline. It is the nicer of the two, as the other
has been used.........

[Walkwolf]

#2.........

[Scout]

They look to be in good condition.My bayonet (which I posted else where on the forum) has a worn sheath, but the bayonet itself is in good condition, as is typical for a carried but unused bayonet.

It hard to see in the pic, but it doesnt look like your second blade has a hyphen in the Lan-Cay name? (which happened at one production stage).

There is a rare variation made by a subcontractor (United Cutlery):
Things to look for in an Original General Cutlary M9 Bayonet include an unmarked pommel, screw driver at the end of the cutter plate on the scabbard and 1992 dated fastex connector. Late production GenCut LanCay M9s (non-original) will likely have Lan-Cay marked butt pieces (pommel).

At some point the saw teeth were moved forward and the small step at the start of the saw teeth was eliminated, but see below.

Here some info too help determine which variation, your LanCays are:

Lan-Cay received it’s first contract for 30,500 M9 bayonets on 3/31/92 from the U.S. Army with an additional 21,500 bayonets added during the contract. In an effort to quickly supply the Army with new M9 bayonets after Desert Storm, Lan-Cay turned to General Cutlery as a sub-contractor to provide near completed blades for assembly at the Lan-Cay facility. All General Cutlery produced blades are easily identified as they are stamped on the ricasso "M9 / LANCAY / USA" in block letters of equal size. This form of marking was used only on the General Cutlery made blades and will not be used again.

These General Cutlery made M9 bayonets were produced in a very limited number and original General Cutlery assembled M9 bayonets are extremely rare. At least 300 examples, possibly more, were delivered to the Army and are passed inspection and put into military the supply system. Problems with manufacturing controls lead to the termination of this subcontract with General Cutlery but blades from the General Cutlery contract still exist in some quantity so buyers of General Cutlery LanCay M9 bayonets need to be cautious before buying what they believe to be an original and supply system General Cutlery M9 Bayonet. Things to look for in an Original General Cutlary M9 Bayonet include an unmarked pommel, screw driver at the end of the cutter plate on the scabbard and 1992 dated fastex connector. Late production GenCut LanCay M9s (non-original) will likely have Lan-Cay marked butt pieces (pommel).

At the same time that LanCay was getting blades made by General Cutlary, LanCay purchased it’s own machinery and tooling for the production of blades and was making first contract blades in house. These blades are marked with all capitol letters but in a different font size. The marking was as follows, "M9 / LANCAY / USA" with the "L" and "C" much larger then the other letters in the name. All LanCay M9 bayonet blades have been manufactured in house from this point forward.

It is also noted that all the bayonets produced up to this point were left in the natural or "white" state on the blades. This was the required milspec finish. The coloring variation between the Lan-Cay produced blades and the original Phrobis contract blades is due to the finish process. Phrobis bead blasted the blades while Lan-Cay used a heavier sand blasting procedure. Thus the Lan-Cay blades appear a little darker, almost a light gray. This was soon to change as an "ECP" (Engineering Change Proposal) was supplied from Lan-Cay to Rock Island Arsenal for approval. Another change that took place during the first contract stage was a reduction in the depth of the fuller. Because of Bureaucracy, it is easier to make a change in a specification then to eliminate one. A classic end run was found to this problem. The fuller design was set at a depth of .06 with a plus or minus of .06 !! The .06 was 50% shallower then the previous design. In total 350 M9 bayonets were produced with the shallow fuller before the change to eliminate the fuller was agreed to. This was to prevent the blade breakage encountered in some of the earliest Phrobis products. Come to find out later that blade hardening and tempering was the culprit not the fuller. Anyway this makes the half fullered blade amongst the rarest to be encountered today. It was also at this time that Lan-Cay switched from forged blades to laser cut blades. The unfullered blades mark the change over period to this new production method.

A second contract was awarded to Lan-Cay on 9/1/94. This contract was for 104,111 Product Improved M9 bayonets. All the while that the first contract bayonets were being produced, Lan-Cay along with Rock Island Arsenal had been working on improvements to the M9 and the scabbard assembly. This second contract was to be the culmination of these efforts, the "Product Improved M9."

Although there had not been any reports of breakage of Lan-Cay produced blades the Army was still worried about the problem. To correct this potential problem several changes were approved. The first was to move the saw teeth further forward on the spine of the blade. Along with this the bottom of the teeth were rounded instead of the sharper "V" on earlier blades. Lan-Cay set their own broaching machine up to handle this with relative ease. Also the small "step" on the top of the blade just behind the saw teeth was eliminated for the simplification of manufacture. Another contract stipulation was to have the blades finished in a black oxide coating. A small number of M9 bayonets were still needed to finish off the first contract so the physical changes mentioned above minus the black oxide finish were used to complete the contract. Shipped on 4/21/95 were 1,090 Product Improved M9 bayonets with the sand blasted finish. These 1,090 blades make them some of the rarer bayonets for the collector to find. Again just another variation to add to the list. The second group of P.I. M9 bayonets with the full list of changes including the finish were delivered to the Army on 8/18/95 making this the first group of the second contract. Now comes the tricky part, during the second contract production the blade grinding was changed over from hollowing grinding to flat grinding to give the blade a stronger edge. Examples of both the flat grind and the hollow grind can be found with the standard for the time marking of "M9 / LANCAY / USA".

At the time of the flat grind blade development the corporate name of LanCay was changed over to Lan-Cay with a hyphen. It was at this time that the blade markings were changed to the now familiar "M9 / LAN -CAY / USA". This we will call the third type marking. All blades produced from this point in time were so marked which includes the overwhelming majority of the second contract. Another change much later in the second contract was a move back to forging the blades.

Now for another twist, in early 1995 approximately 200 of the first style blades were placed aside in the factory as the blade tips were a fraction of an inch thinner then the specification called for. As the difference was extremely small, Lan-Cay submitted a Request for Variance to the Army to have these blades approved. Somehow the paperwork was misplaced and the variance was never approved. When the paperwork was finally found and the variance approved the first contract had ended. The second contract called for black oxide finish so a black finish was applied to these blades and they were included with the second contract. Early style first contract blades with the "M9 / LANCAY / USA" type marking, a second contract late style black finish and only two hundred made, the rarest of the production group so far.

Another interesting model produced by Lan-Cay were a group of hollow ground, black oxide finishes that had clear Lucite handles. These bayonets were used for test purposes to see the inner workings of the tang and to teach budding Army Armorer’s.

So as we can see, although they are new to the scene, the M9 bayonets are the beginning of a collectors dream. Many different variations with documented history behind them. It doesn’t get any better then that. The Lan-Cay second contract ended in the second week of April 1997 with all bayonets being furnished and accepted on time.

In September of 1999, a contract was offered for 25,000 M9 bayonets for the U.S. Army. Until this time Lan-Cay had been the only bidder on the M9 contracts since taking over production from Buck. In this bid however, Ontario Knife Company, a long time government provider in cutlery felt they could be competitive in the M9 bid as they had procured new laser cutting equipment. When the bidding was finalized the contract was split. Rock Island, the government entity that procures bayonets felt that by having a backup provider it would improve the overall competitiveness. So it came to pass that Lan-Cay would produce 12,500 bayonets and Ontario would produce 12,500 bayonets.

All from this excellent M9 site:
LanCay M9 Bayonet - History of the M9 Bayonet II

LanCay is now sadly defunct.

[Reibert]

Very interesting postings, very nice bayonets, thx. fellows !

Rgds.,

R.

P.S.:
I always prefer blank weapons showin´ the "been there, done that" look !

[Reibert]

...
I recently bought a USMC marked Phrobis. ...

It´s an commercial one ...

Here´re some images of the USMC OKC3S:

[Scout]

It´s an commercial one ...

No, it is not. The bayonet is a service bayonet, but someone later added USMC markings to jack up the price (which totally doesnt matter to me apart from the fact, that I got a genuine PHROBIS bayonet VERY cheap;-)).






I mention that here in thread about the bayonet:

https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/bayon...ayonet-219816/

I should have elaborated; my PHROBIS is good quality bayonet and the PHROBIS is very interesting IMO for the history and for the knife designing genius, Mickey Finn.

At some point, the sheath was marked USMC to jack up the price. This ploy failed, as no one fell for it. I knew what it was: An original PHROBIS and didnt pay a lot of money for it, because of the USMC markings.

In fact, the markings on the sheath alone make the price very low, so I could not be any more happy. Wish I had bought two in fact.

[Reibert]

Such "commemoratives" are pretty collectible, no question !

Here´s my "screamin´ eagle":

[Scout]

Well, to me the PHROBIS is nice to have, but then I was only after it, as I wanted an original M9.

The bayonet in itself is not worth so much in monetary terms, that doesnt matter an iota to me.
I just jumped at it, as it seemed like I could make a very good deal on an original PHROBIS, which turned out to be the case.

That the bayonet was/is a used service bayonet is only a bonus to me; we both like 'user' blades.

Im not a bayonet collector per se (I just buy some blades, that I like) and dont plan to buy every variation of the M9.

Apart from that, as mentioned in my above post by FT, the M9 is a collectors dream; many variations and well documented to boot.

Slightly OT, but speaking of users: WWII Cattaraugus 225Q - THE best generic utility knife to come out of WWII - and original postWWII FS bought from a soldier who carried it on missions several decades ago. Both of these are in very good condition and both were silly cheap as well BTW.

[Reibert]

On Carl´s, ("Old Smithy"), site you can find more of them.
Also a Commercial by Lan Cay with Airborne logo on the ricasso, made for collectors.

There´re M9 bayonets with the Logo of the 101st, the 10th Mountain´s, the USMC, the "Tropical Lightning", the 82nd, ...

[Scout]

Yes, thats an excellent site, that I have used for reference.

I just went and looked now; he has loads of M9 variations!

I have looked at the CAMILLUS bayonet for the XM8 rifle. He has one of those as well.

It looks good.

Sadly both LanCay and CAMILLUS are now defunct.