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I think I know what this bayonet is without seeing it. I have a few in my collection. It is probably a 1987 commercially marked blade, second generation style markings on the left ricasso. To the left side of the normal marking is a smaller hand-stamped "S". There are also blades marked with an "H". These are blades that were used by Buck for heat treating testing to determine the optimum hardness for the blade tangs. I have had several conversations with Joe Houser at Buck knives concerning these blades. Joe told me that to the best of his knowledge the letters stand for "soft" and "hard".
An interesting side note: in December 2004 Buck was clearing out their El Cajon, California facility in preparation for their move to Idaho. They came across some miscellaneous M9 parts in the factory and assembled them into bayonets. I had asked Joe Houser if they had any spare parts around so he emailed me to tell me that they had found some stuff but they were assembling them into bayonets and selling them in the factory store. He put two aside for me, one with a green grip and one with a black grip. They didn't have any M9 bayonet scabbards, but they did have some Buckmaster scabbard bodies without the webbing that they stuck the bayonets in. I was pleasantly surprised when they arrived to find that these bayonets had been made with the heat treating test blades. I received one with the "S" and one with the "H". The blades must have been sitting around in the engineering Department since they did the testing back in the late 1980s.
I wrote a brief article on these bayonets that was recently published in the Journel of the Society of American Bayonet Collectors. Look for it to show up sooner or later at usmilitaryknives.com under the Guest Writers column.
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Last edited by porterkids; 03-29-2013 at 12:32 PM.
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