Fireman's dress bayonet

[Billy G]

So far as I've been able to ascertain, Hoppe & Homann, Minden was an actual manufacturer of fire bayonets & not a distributor. Admittedly I initially thought them to be a distributor since the mark is quite scarce & rather plain as opposed to an actual logo. My copy of Fisher's maker mark guide listed HMH has a horseshoe factory which is konda cool. I guess it follows they may have made some blades rather than have been a retailer of such wares. On my HMH example, the hilt looks to be a Horster product & it is quite possible, as a small cottage manyfacturer, that they may have bought some of their parts from larger manufacturers. Either way, it's a scarce mark to see.

My first run in with this mark was in collecting fire bayonets. I haven't seen this mark on any other blade at all but my thought is that if they did make something else, it might have been either early SA daggers or early HJ knives but this is just a gut feeling. Thanks for sharing it.