Ilion Serial Numbers. Post here any informational material such as serial #s/dates or other firearms. This is a knife that I purchased back in the mid 80s -- 1985, I believe. It's been a utility knife mostly in the years that I have had it, although I originally purchased it to be a carry knife.
Below: My last Gerber Mk-II purchase. Yes my wife is going to kill me, but there are somethings a man has to do.right?
Odd thing about the knife is I believe that someone sanded/filed off the Gerber logo. You can almost see the outline in the image.
If they wanted a sterile knife, why then would they add the SF crest? Perhaps they added it later in retirement? The serial number places the date of manufacture in 1979. This is long after Vietnam but there were other conflicts aplenty to go fight in. No grey handled knives at that late date.
It looks like the same person sanded off the black finish in the middle of the handle to make it look like a gray handle. Maybe they just didn't like the basic black look and in 1979 could not buy a grey one. A quick lick with a diamond hone had the edges ready to slice and dice again. Like the Fairbairn-Sykes, the Gerber MK-II is a quintessential combat dagger of a later age.
Valor Knives made some fair quality replicas, in the day. Below: An incredibly beautiful 1968 vintage Gerber MK-II that was professionally altered during the Viet-Nam war era. This knife was reground to a needle-like point similar to a WW-II Metford-Fairbairn. Whomever performed the work did a superb job of grinding the blade. Tutorial blog wordpress lengkap pdf.
Photo courtesy of Michel Gassier. Clearly the person who carried this knife was nit intending to use it for anything other than assassin-like attacks.
Cyberlink power producer. This Gerber is my all time favorite and I think WE Fairbairn would have heartily approved of it. If anyone has one of these for sale.contact me. An array of blades showing variety of profiles and differences between serrations and two non-serrated blades. All of them are wasp-waisted to one extent or another. Interesting, perhaps, is that the smallest blade in the middle is also the earliest one from 1968.
Several of them are canted blades including the one on the left which is from 1978. The 'canted' blade has a five degree bend at the guard which was intended to make the knife lie closer to the owners body, to prevent the handle from snagging on jungle undergrowth, clothing, or gear.
This Vietnam era Model 2 is in mint condition, pretty well eliminating any chance that it was ever carried in combat. Many times stronger than a Gerber or an F~S, it is an excellent fighting knife. Arkansas Toothpick: I have sold or traded off almost all of my Randall knives except the VN era 2-8 (center) and a small 2-4. I used the money to buy more F-S knives. Randall also offers a 'Toothpick' design which harkens back to the Old West and Gold Rush Days. The toothpick comes in several different lengths from boot knife size to Bowie size and with many handle options.
Here is an array of my Gerber MK-II (Mark Two) survival/fighting knives. They were, without a doubt, among the more popular knives to own and carry during the Vietnam war. The handle is extremely ergonomic, the blades were delivered hair-shaving sharp, and they came in a well designed and high quality leather sheath. Note the knife on the far right has had one branch of the guard shorn to provide the owner with a thumb ramp. This was not uncommon.
I have in fact seen others with both arms removed to make the dagger even more low profile. The handles were tough, cast aluminum with an integral guard. The Gerber MK-II of that era was one of the finest fighting knives ever made. The new ones are lackluster, missing that earlier grace and elegance. During photographing these knives I discovered that the blade of the 1968 knife is strongly magnetic?
![Gerber Gerber](http://www.knifecollector.net/images/GerberMkIIBlack.jpg)
I am not sure how that might have happened, when or why. Shown below This Applegate-Fairbairn-Randall was reproduced by Boker Knives in Germany. The original knife was produced by Randall knives of Orlando. This was Col. Rex Applegate's version of an improved and stouter Fairbairn, but it is not much different from a Randall Model 2. It is a well built knife and a reliable combat companion.
The Boker knives were a very limited production run and quite scarce today. It came with this high quality leather sheath. More than one person has said it looked like a spin-off from the original Shanghai Daggers. Some people claim Applegate was taking credit for what was basically a Yeaton-Fairbairn Shanghai dagger design. I do not particularly agree with their reasoning.