Wilde Tool Bayonet?

[Wick]

Hello!

I have a 1943 Wilde Tool bayonet with scabbard. It is the full 16" with the original grip panels (red plastic with black rectangle). It looks all original, with very little wear. I'm looking for a ballpark on what it is worth.

Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks!

John

[dave]

Never heard or seen such grip panals, does not sound original.

[Wick]

From what I have found on-line, the grips are considered "typical" for WT bayonets:

Red grips with a black center panel are most commonly associated with Wilde production.

(link embedded in quote, above)

[5MadFarmers]

The grips on Wilde bayonets are unique as the OP claims. Scroll to the very bottom of this page:

http://www.usmilitaryknives.com/bayo_points_23.htm

And you'll see the "red plastic with black rectangle" he's mentioning.

I haven't tracked bayonet values for a while. They were getting $550 or thereabouts when I stopped tracking.

[thorin6]

An original 16" WWII M1905 bayonet with the scabbard, in reasonably good shape, goes for about $275-$300. A Wilde Tool 16" bayonet could go for about twice that, in the $550-600 range. I have a cut-down (correctly marked by the company that cut it down) 10" Rock Island Arsenal M1905 bayonet with the black rectangle on the reddish brown plastic grips. Most likely they started on a 16" Wilde Tool bayonet and then ended up on the RIA bayonet after it was cut-down. Back then a grip was a grip

[Wick]

Maybe you should join the GCA.

I am a proud member, sir! I had pondered submitting a classified to the GCA journal, but I had no idea what it was worth. Based on posts here, I would have been giving someone a heck of a deal!

I'm glad I posted my question. Thank you one and all for the information!

[Tom in N.J.]

Wilde Tool M1905 bayonets had grips from sub contractors. The brownish grips with the black center panel are unique to W&T, however there were also W&T bayonets factory shipped with all black grips.

[jeremy69]

Wilde Tool M1905 bayonets had grips from sub contractors. The brownish grips with the black center panel are unique to W&T, however there were also W&T bayonets factory shipped with all black grips.

What are you basing that on? I have asked about that before and nobody has gone out on that limb. Anything is possible and never say never, so I am curious as to your source. I have a stone mint 43 WT with black grips that came from Scott Duff, he said he could not prove that it came that way but did say it looked to have been that way for sometime so...

[Tom in N.J.]

As the brown with black center grips are not maker marked, it is impossible to determine who made them and what portion of the 60,000 bayonet contract were furnished with those grips. The furnishing of parts to other contractors was quite common during WWII. W&T made their own catches, marked WT, for the early production, but latter ones were furnished by and marked UC. Almost all late production M1905s have UC marked catches. My 1942 dated W&T M1905 has black grips, but is impossible to determine if they are original or replacements. Collectors like to generalize, but in real life there are / were no hard fast production rules.

[jeremy69]

Are your black grips fine or coarse ribbed? If Wilde did run short of grips it is possible that they were supplied through the gov't to keep going and that could account for this, but until records prove it it is only a guess. Most will only accept the ruddy unmarked grips with the black rectangle.

[jeremy69]

Tom in N.J., did you see the above post??

Anyone know if Wilde used only WT marked bayo catches or did they use the UC too?

[jeremy69]

Tom , i just re-read and saw you answered about the UC too. I didn't know if that applied to WT.

[Larry G.]

Are your black grips fine or coarse ribbed? If Wilde did run short of grips it is possible that they were supplied through the gov't to keep going and that could account for this, but until records prove it it is only a guess. Most will only accept the ruddy unmarked grips with the black rectangle.

Jeremy, What is the significance of the coarse or fine black grips? The reason I'm curious is that I have a 1942 WT cutdown which seems to have the fine black grips.

[jeremy69]

The ruddy (red-brown) grips with the black rectangle have a finer grain to them, more LPI (lines per inch). There are also black (possibly brown) grips that exibit the finer LPI, Check out Gary's Bayonet points. He discusses differnt makers and the LPI chracteristics which I do not recall right now. Most of the plastic grips are marked and Gary has identified the makers through a Bakealite museum's help. The Source of the Wilde grip has not been identified and Wilde destroyed old records when they moved so it may remain a mystery too..

Thanks to Gary!