Todays bayonets

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Mark, are there any markings left on the spike bayonet?

I have shown my two on the forum in the past.

Cheers, Ade.

[davejb]

Although there maybe a few replicas around of the "pig sticker ", the cruciform blade is quite hard to reproduce, in fact the whole range of no/4 s isnt that easy to fake ,mainly because of the type of work involved, ie forming, machining and including the spring mechanism, the amount of work involved for comparitively cheap bayonets would not really be financially beneficial. On most no4s there are markings with a broad war dept arrow, you just have to look hard, also you may find some markings on the scabbard especially at the throat( the open top to the scabbard),

[cornish1]

Thanks guys,i have just looked and looked and looked at both blade and scabbard,the only thing i can see/make out for sure is an N or Z on the lip of the scabbard?

[lithgow]

I would think it unlikely that a relic quality bayo would be a fake if you didn't pay very much for it-if you didn't buy it as a rare model of the otherwise very common and inexpensive spike bayo then there's no point (pardon the pun).

[cornish1]

You have a point there

[davejb]

CORNISH1 , you say you looked at the blade, did you look at the heavy end where the main body is, the marks are normally on one side or both of the flat sides , if you havent done so already scan all around there, sometimes they are very feint and hard to see, even more so if there is some corrosion

[Time Bandit]

I've got some pictures of some of my spike bayo's on my website showing the markings so maybe worth having a look at them to see if it gives you any clues as to where to look on yours? Mine are all MKII or MKII* but the markings are usually pretty much in the same place. The MKI will be marked up as a No4 MKI and will have a crown and S M (or maybe S M C, I can't recall off hand but I think it's just S M...?).

No 4 MKII & MKII* bayo's and markings...