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, and widely used today in circuit boards). Steel scabbard with brass throat piece, khaki canvas No. 6 postwar 1937 Pattern frog with unstitched slit for the frog stud. Hilt and pommel blued.

The blade is stamped on one side at the ricasso with ‘No 7 MK 1/L’ and on the other side with a broad arrow War Department mark and what looks like a ‘C’. The hilt is stamped on one side with ‘P 9’. The pommel is faintly stamped on one side with another broad arrow and on its base with ‘V’ over ‘114’ and the letter ‘B’.

The exposed track for the sliding button is stamped with a broad arrow War Department mark. The reverse of the frog is printed with a broad arrow and the partly rubbed maker’s mark ‘___AND LTD. 1955’.

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.