Tune,

Great topic! I had / have a fair number of fighting field knives, some of which I turned loose of after I made a decision to collect only Hunters. There are times I regret this decision, but then I think of all the nice Hunters I would have had to pass up because I couldn't afford them.

This is one of my favorites and there is a nice story behind it: 10 years or so ago, this knife and sheath come up on ebay and I ended up losing it to Perry. At the next Blade show I asked him if he still had it. He digs under a pile of knives in his display case and damned if he doesn't come up with it! I ask him how much he wants and he tells me he'll take what he paid for it! That act cemented my absolute trust in the guy and we had many business dealings in the years that followed. More importantly, I had acquired a dear friend:



The next knife also has a Randall friend involved: His name is Bob Eckman and when he arrived on the Randall scene, he bought more Randalls than Tattoo Bill (If you can believe that! ). In any event, Bob decided to get out of Randalls years later and this is one of his holding he turned loose of. There is a line in Isaiah 2:3-4 that goes "they shall beat their swords into plowshares". This applies here: The top quillion was likely lopped off post war to facilitate the use of the knife for civilian activities. Note: The polished stag handle is rare for this era:



This is another one of my favorites. It is an example of Tom Leschorn's earliest work (The "Low S" puts the knife forging to '64-'65, and Tom's first work with Bo was in 1964). Tom carved his initials in the ivory insets in his earliest work:



As an aside, I was lucky enough to pick up a "mini me" example sans fighting hilt shortly after acquiring the 6" version:



This one is name-etched to a Korean war vet. It has every option possible for a knife in the early 50's to include a compass in the butt:



This one came up on ebay with only a "knife" as the description. As a result, it went pretty cheap. It had never been sharpened:



I have more Model 3's with a double hilt. However, I need to take some pics so I can post them (which I will do this week).

Best,