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Changes to the F-S?

8/24/2018

3 Comments

 
Well gang the book is coming along but it is not finished. The bad news is I had to break it into two volumes. There was so much material I would have had to throw half of it out if I wanted to fit everything into one volume. What would be the sense in that? It is still over two hundred pages long, heavily illustrated, and not finished. I spent hundreds of hours on it this summer and hoped it would be done before I started back teaching at college.

I actually redid the whole front end of the book to include some examples of iconic WW-I fighting knives and provide some background into the knives that Fairbairn and Sykes could have referenced before finalizing their design.  I am of the opinion that Fairbairn had a rethink of how he wanted the new knife to be modified from the Shanghai F-S model. These changes were based on the difference between fighting Chinese gangsters in light weight clothing, to killing soldiers in heavy uniforms and battle gear. I believe his long voyage home from Shanghai gave him time to reflect on these changes. His basic design was solid, but it needed “beefed up.”

Fairbairn also knew one of the major obstacles he would face was finding a manufacturer who would make what he wanted, the way he wanted it, and who was not already operating at full capacity. We all know who ended up making the first ones. They made hundreds of thousands of them, but were they his first choice? I have the answer to that question in the book.
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3 Comments
Travis
8/26/2018 03:59:14 am

Interesting stuff! I'm sure the book will answer plenty of questions.
An early Wilkinson in the pic maybe?

Reply
david
11/22/2018 08:31:27 am

Travis sorry I did not answer your question. The knife in the photo may have been made by Wilkinson WW-I era. It was marked and sold as a Cogswell & Harrison, the famous British gunmaker.

Reply
Wesley
9/26/2018 08:35:32 pm

Can you tell me what year my gerber mark ii is?

Reply



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    Author:

    You can find out more about me on the "Stories" pages. My hobbies have included training in Japanese martial arts, including Kenjutsu, many forms of knife fighting, long range rifles and tactical firearms. I have written several self published books on muzzle-loading firearms, knife-fighting and textbooks on gas engines and compressors. I am working diligently on my 400+ page F-S book.

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