Standard Wooden Handled Knives:
The wooden handled F~S are most commonly found in two basic styles. The one style closely imitates a P-3, the other one is a fat oval shape unlike any other F~S handle. The P-3 style a re generally painted black and the oval shaped ones are left their natural Beech color and simply varnished. Early in my collecting days these knive were not very popular with myself or other collectors. The prices were much cheaper than the more recognized varieties and so I added a few to our collection. Some people claim they were for use in tropical climates where the  metallic handles would be uncomfortable to use. Other say they were made for airborne paratroopers, or pilots, to save weight. I am not convinced that either of these are accurate assumptions.

The blades were, for the most part, thin ones, likely late war. Some experts tried to relegate all of these knives to a post-war period but that has since been proven false. Many of the examples I have seen had nicely finished blades and thick guards. A few of the handles exhibit cracks due to the wood shrinking over the past 70 years. The P3 style also used typical top nuts (right) whereas the oval handled ones used recessed and slotted top nuts (left).

None of the knives in my collection have any inspectors marks which leads me to conclude that they may have been primarily an after-market or private purchase item. Certainly they would have been cheaper, "in the day", than the standard models and may have appealed to men with tighter purse strings. All of this is simply my own opinon and conjecture. The following photo is a close up of a knife made by Geo. Wolstenholm of Sheffield, of the famous IXL brand name. When new it had a lovely peacock blued blade. This was a temper blue, achieved by heating the blade to that color and quenching it.

It was a bugger to get a photo of this etch and in the process the lighting made the bright blue blade look black. This knife also came with an unusual sheath. It seems that the wood handled knives had no specific sheath issued with them because all of mine came in assorted styles.

Wood Handled Non-F~S:
In this section I have included a few wood handled knives that are obviously not traditional F~S style. One of them was converted from a German Youth Dagger, I believe. I am not knowledgeable in this field but it made a terrific little dagger. The handle is a composite of wood and leather washers. It has a neatly made guard and the end of the handle is capped with an enameled  swastika medallion.

Here is a close-up of the handle and the blade etching and pommel.

The knife illustrated below, middle, is a French "Avenger." These knives were used throughout two world wars. They are a very well built knife whose blade is very similar in format to a Randall Model 2. The knives are almost always found housed in these metal sheaths, held in place by a spring. The provenance of the top knife is unknown, perhaps handmade.