Dagger of the day, the rare Western L76 (shown with the similar L77). Why is this knife so rarely encountered? Author Mike Silvey speculated in one of his blade books that it was because of the difficulty of grinding it as compared to a single edge blade. Its brother blade, the much more commonly encountered L77, is single edged and surely was much easier, faster and cheaper to manufacture. MH Cole's US Knives Book III has a drawing of the L76 but indicates that it had a blued blade. The blade on my example is bright and, almost miraculously given the passage of 70 years since the end of WW2, has never been sharpened. Cole also shows a copy of the Western brochure printed after the end of the War which includes the L76 as among the knives it made in WW2. #georgeknives #daggerdaggerdagger #ww2 #commandodagger #hallofrecords #deptofcuriosandrellics #western (at Tualatin, Oregon)
