Silver alloy handle (with quillion or quillion removed)

Brass handle (with quillion or quillion removed), rare

Silver alloy handle with quillion.

WWI wire breaker for Lebel.

The whole piece slides down the cruciform blade and there is a bend on the internal side of the wire cutter that allows you to do this and it also keeps the wire cutter locked into position. You slide the wire cutter completely down to the hilt of the bayonet. The cutter has a long curved spring type hook on it that allows you to lock the whole piece up against the hilt of the bayonet. The hook clicks round the locking catch of the bayonet fully securing it to the bayonet. In use, the bayonet is attached to the rifle and this allows you to use the bayonet tip to pick up a strand of barbed wire, tilt it upwards sliding the wire to the wire cutter which is v shaped. The wire then, in the wire cutter, is lodged across the mouth of the barrel, the rifle is then fired cutting the wire. The British had a similar type of instrument that was fitted to their Pat 07.

Silver alloy handle with quillion removed.

• Brass handle
• Alloy handle (rare)
• Steel handle (rare. Blued or painted black)

Silver alloy handle. Easy to mix up with cleaned steel handle, but silver alloy is not magnetic.

Painted steel handle.

Steel handle, blued.

Blade officiallly shortened to 400mm in 1935. For m35 rifle. Not same as much more common bayonets shortened by germans (340mm).

m1886/35 with alloy handle and quillion. Possibly not official, as 1935 quillion hook was not regulatory.