British and Commonwealth Military Knives [Hardcover]

Ron Flook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1999

Flook has drawn on 20 years of collecting experience to create this comprehensive guide to knives used by British and Commonwealth military personnel over the past 150 years. Pieces from the Victorian era, WWI, WWII, and those used by today's forces in Australia, India, Canada, and New Zealand are covered. Many items, such as the RAF commando knife and previously unrecorded patterns of Robbins of Dudley knives, are correctly identified or illustrated for the first time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

British and Commonwealth Military Knives is the book for which a lot of collectors have been waiting a long time. There is nothing else of any substance available on the subject. -- Arms Collecting

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Howell Press Inc.; First edition (June 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574270923
• ISBN-13: 978-1574270921
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,965,041 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive Cutlery Compendium, July 17, 1999

By 

El Cutachero (MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: British and Commonwealth Military Knives (Hardcover)

This is a highly impressive work. Every individual item discussed is keyed to an individual text and is often accompanied by multi-views and enlargements. In many cases, there is documentation, many of which are letters from manufacturers and government procurement agencies. There is very little referencing to previous works. This is not an omnium-gatherum nor a synthesis of existing works. It is a new beginning.
The only thing remotely as detailed or as useful is Robert Baeurlein's thorough work "Allied Fighting Knives" which is mainly about fighting knives and gives short schrift to working blades, plus most of it is about U.S. patterns and includes much more textual descriptions plus many first hand accounts.
This work divides many types of blades and edged tools up by the major Commonwealth nations wherein they were produced, beginning in the 1880s and continuing up till the present decade.
The major countries and nations covered are Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The amount of items covered lessens the further one gets from Britain, but that is understandable. Everything including commercial knives sold to officers and explorers is covered.
There is no coverage of items produced in other Far Eastern areas for Empire and Commonwealth Forces nor anything produced in Africa, thus omitting those formerly white-ruled countries of the former Rhodesia (now Zimbablwe) and South Africa, though both are known to have local cutlery industries.
This may have been due to the lack of contacts consequent to the former political situation of sanctions, whixh precluded both commercial and social contact between Britain and those lands. Or perhapa they just did not make anything there for their forces.
As in any work of this monumentality, it is not perfect. No matter how long one works, there will always be something omitted. It is the nature of the endeavour. The author has added a chapter of last minute discoveries in his attempt to be as encyclopedic as possible. I learned much from this book and I will refer to it again in my own writings.
But, a few minor quibbles. The author fails to distinguish between the use of the two synonyms--matchet and machete. The latter being the original Spanish term and used in North America also, and the former, the official British term. Both are pronounced identically except for the e on the end--the t being silent. Because of his use of the American spelling throughout, he missed the significance of the derivation of the term for a famoous short bladed fighting instrument of WW II, the smatchet, usually pronounced to rhyme with hatchet, but again the t is silent. Smatchet is a contraction of small + matchet just as Bren is a contraction.
He also fails to recognize the tool-weapon issued to native troops of northern Burma by its true name of dah and lumps it in with machetes. He has found a few more patterns of dahs than I have. Of course, these crudely finished implements are so badly marked that moat are unreadable. And he may have included some similar tools made in southern China for local use. These are much better finished than British or Indian issued patterns.
And finally he missed a rather unusual and strange machete made in Australia in WW II. But, with those few exceptions, one with any interest in this material should buy this book. I will just give it an A not an A+. You can throw away that old copy of Stephens now.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book about British knives, August 28, 2003

By 

Jansson Sven-olof - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: British and Commonwealth Military Knives (Hardcover)

Very good review of all military knives of the British empire 1800-today.
Cover F-S Fighting knives in a good way.
Plenty of pictures.
It is something you must buy!