Moroccan Berber dagger "bayonet"
Lets dive straight into some exciting preservation story which started over hundred years ago beneath the burning desert sand of Morocco by someone belonging to the indigenous Berber people. This "now" gorgeous piece of craftsmanship combined with thriftiness so to speak of its creator to use old piece of French military equipment. Was it made from a bayonet left there by the French when they retreated? or was it custom made for the French Legionare from who´s estate this dagger came from? We will probably never know. But the provenance is clear, this soldier served in Morocco and this piece was in his possession for long time, as it´s state of decay can atest to.
Scabbard is nicely chiseled and made out of silver. I was unable to identify the wood used on the handle, my guess is probably sometihing native or readily available in Morocco.
When I recieved this to be worked on, the state it was in left a lot to be desired, at first I was not able to get it unsheated, took a lot of penetrating oil and some brute strength, but i was able to to do that without any damage.
After the initial look of horror, the more I examined the dagger the more interesting it became and made me appreciate the quality.
Overall appearance and shape is consistent with Moroccan Berber daggers, somewhat interesting is the different materials used on different sides, but would make sense since only one would be shown when worn if made for a local.
But the most interesting part of the examination was the fact that the blade was a repurposed Berthier bayonet, that was surprisingly in a fairly good condition compared to the state of the scabbard.
All of the metal parts were first needed to be soaked in penetrating oil overnight, after that everything was wiped dry with clean cloth. After that I used fine carding wheel to clean all the rust off of the surfaces that were being attacked by rust or oxidation. Unfortunately, other halves of the silver rings (on scabbard throat and over the ricasso) were made of iron, and as photos can attest, they almost desintegrated. After clening they had to be stabilized by tannic solution from further degradation.
Interestingly, scabbard was made of two halves, one was silver, the other was brass and where one would expect to find those halves soldered together, here we have decoratively twisted iron rods the halves are soldered to.
The wodden handle had some minor water damadge, but was easy to clean with distilled water andneutral detergent, only thing it needed was light oil coating.
And lastly, the bend hanger ring was bent back to the place.
Overall, work on this piece was exciting, especially at the begining when I had no idea what to expect to pull out of the scabbard.
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