Just a little help from those more knowledgeable

[ibele-finley]

Little help please. I'm mostly a pocket knife and civilian fixed blade collector, save for Viet Nam Era Camillus survival knives. Recently i've gotten this urge to pick up a couple of WW II Mark 2 knives. Questions: I see some that are stamped on the guard rather than the tang/ricasso. why was that done? Are all of those such marked knives from WW II era? How can the original leather type sheaths be distinguished from post WW II sheaths?
Hope someone can help.
I. Finley

[elbertson]

I'm guessing they moved the stampings to the guard to save on production cost and time. As far as I know guard stampings were all later wartime production. Wartime sheaths are plain tan to medium brown (from dirt,oil,etc.) and have 9 rivets or 9-10 staples. Post war went to 7 rivets at some time and the color went from tan to dark brown (vietnam era) to black (post vietnam).This is a bit generalized, I'm sure there could be exceptions.

[orvet]

The ones stamped on the blades are the earlier ones.

There was feedback from the field that some knives were breaking at the spot where the knives were stamped on the blade.
This was likely greatly overstated, however the War Dept told Camillus to stop stamping the blades, so they moved the stamping to the guard.

Dale