Originally Posted By: Jacknola
A real beauty, and a nice picture and background. I like the hilt ... different and striking combo.

This saw-tooth M14 is my favorite RMK of all. I have one and I carried a solingen facimile in Vietnam. I cannot date yours because I lack experience ... but I think this basic model has been unchanged since the early '70s. Original sheath and stone would have helped date it. Perhaps there are some features that the more expert RMK club memebers can identify.

This is an Orlando stainless blade which raises a question that I've wondered about for 40 years, re: Randall Orlando stainless vs. Randall Solingen stainless.

The Randall Solingen stainless blades of the Viet era were notoriously hard to put an edge on. The soft stone included with the sheath would just not make a mark on the hard stainless steel. We therefore used a variety of local means to sharpen a Solingen stainless blade, usually scratching it up pretty good in the process.

Are the Orlando-stainless blades "softer" and easier to edge? Or are they, too, a hard steel needing special techniques to edge?



Alot of things can make a knife easier to sharpen. Somethings like chromium (needed for rust resistance) and nickel make them harder to sharpen. Randalls stainless is pretty easy to sharpen but not as easy as 01 tool steel. I would guess the german blades were just not of very high quality and had a low carbon content.

I have done a few rust resistance tests on randalls and the current stainless is very rust resistant. Its one of the few steels I cannot get to rust. The 01 however you can watch rust if you put some sweat on the blade.
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Ben