British Lee Enfield No. 7 Mk 1 Land Service Bayonet

Single-fullered bowie knife blade with clipped point, blued for 5mm at the ricasso. Red-brown grips made of Paxolin (resin-impregnated paper, similar to Micarta, widely used today in circuit boards). Steel scabbard with brass throat. Hilt and pommel blued. The blade is stamped on one side at the ricasso with a broad arrow War Department mark. The pommel is stamped with another broad arrow and numbers, which have been worn by rubbing. Manufacturers of the No. 7 had numbered codes which can appear stamped on the pommels. The hilt is stamped on one side with ‘89’.

The penultimate model of bayonet designed for the Lee-Enfield No. 4 rifle and Sten Mk 5 submachine gun, the No. 7 was an attempt to produce a bayonet that was equally useful as a utility/fighting knife and a mounted bayonet, by way of an innovative rotating pommel which contains the locking mechanism. 330,000 were produced between 1944 and 1948, but doubts about the rigidity of the mechanism under stress and its high cost of manufacture meant that the No. 7 was largely passed over for the simpler No. 9. The bayonet designed for the ill-fated EM series of experimental bullpup service rifles was essentially a strengthened No. 7.