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- Jan 23, 2013
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This week, I've had the pleasure to receive what may turn out to be the most unique knife in my Al Mar collection!
Before getting into the nitty-gritty of things, let me give you some form of context about the knife, then we will get into more details of the different versions of this knife within the Al Mar collection. Last we will review the characteristics of this knife that make it, if not a unique model, a rarity among Al Mar Knives collections!
So, as you have read in the title, the knife we will be talking about today is a Fairbairn-Sykes.
W.E. Fairbairn was a British Royal Marine and police officer that developed a highly influential method of hand to hand combat for the Shanghai Municipal Police known as Défendu and authored the book All-In Fighting (aka Get Tough! In the US).
Eric Sykes worked together with W.E. Fairbairn in the Shanghai Municipal Police in the mid 1920s.
Fairbairn and Sykes have worked together for the British government during World War II to create and teach a method of fighting that would be used by the British, American and Canadian Commandos as well as SOE agents.
The goal was to use the most modern close-combat concepts such as point shooting, hand to hand fighting based on gross motor skills and knife fighting.
These techniques all had in common to be easy to teach/learn, and using modern medical knowledge so as to only retain the deadliest methods!
Within the concept of knife fighting, Fairbairn and Sykes designed a knife, for the use of allied commandos during World War II, that would turn out to be one the deadliest edges weapon of its time.
The design philosophy was simple, the F-S knife was to be a dagger with a 7 inches long blade. This figure was quite specific as the desired lethal penetration was 4 inches and the thickest military piece of clothing was the Soviet army overcoat which combined with the rest of the uniform would add up to 3 inches.
These two figures together would add up to 7 inches hence the blade length.
The blade had a needlepoint tip helping penetration.
The knife also featured a crossguard that varied in shape across three main configurations first "S" shaped, later becoming straight.
The handle was, for lack of a better word, coke bottle shaped. Initially checkered then ringed (27 rings).
The knife turned out to be extremely deadly but was also imperfect which we will speak about later on.
The knife is still in production to this day by Sheffield Knives but had many other makers both during and after World War II.
Al Mar Knives was among these makers and created several versions.
The most common one, the 4016, was black on black (meaning black blade and black handle) with serrations at the bottom of the blade. These serrations were an added feature to the original Fairbairn-Sykes and remind me of the ones that are on the Gerber Mark II.
This is actually a fairly relevant fact as when the Gerber Mark II was created and used for the sole purpose of killing during the Vietnam War, the knife was removed from the PX system due to it being too brutal and in bad taste.
A young designer working for Gerber at the time, added sawtooth serrations close to the hilt to the Gerber Mark II so that it could be marketed as a survival knife. This modification worked wonders and sales soon resumed.
The young designer was Al Mar himself!
We can now see the parallel between this story and the addition of serrations to the Al Mar 4016.
A few other variants of the Al Mar 4016 existed, all of them with serrations, the main difference being that the blade was not tinted black and that the handle was either brass or aluminium colored.
There is also a presentation version of the Al Mar Fairbairn-Sykes, the 6050 that has a non coloured blade, brass coloured handle and no serrations.
Now that you have a better view of the Al Mar 4016 background and context, let me introduce you to the one I have received today:
Can you notice something different about this knife?
Well yes! It is black on black but it does not feature any serrations at the bottom of the blade!
How is that possible you ask?
Well this one took me a while to crack. The gentleman who sold it to me bought it at a fair in the early to mid 1990s from a reseller who was one of the few selling the latest Al Mar Knives in his neck of the woods.
It has been used solely as a display item for the past 25 years (yes this knife is old enough to drink and to vote).
Outside of this nothing is known about this knife but fret not dear reader for there is one more clue in front of us!
A closer examination of the ricasso shows the infamous Seki-Japan stamp
The collectors used to vintage Al Mar Knives would start seeing an issue here.
This stamp is unusual for several reasons, but let's focus on only two.
#1 The lower branch of the "K" is too short and should be a little longer so that it would be aligned with its vertical bar.
#2 There is a horizontal bar on top of the "J"
At first I smelled something fishy and was afraid of getting an overly well made fake as there are plenty fake Fairbairn-Sykes knives as well as plenty of fake Al Mar Knives but it didn't make any sense as they would have taken the time to add the flat ricasso which I believe is unique to Al Mar's version of the Fairbairn-Sykes.
So I did more research and realised that the stamp was also used somewhere else. Pre-production Al Mar 4016!
Now for those who don't know, whenever a new model would be launched, Al Mar had 200 pre-production knives made, all of which were numbered with said numbered engraved on the blade and then distributed to resellers, good customers or friends in order to gauge the popularity of the model. Mind you that a pre-production version was exactly the same as a production version with the exception of the number.
Of note, because they are numbered, pre-production Al Mar Knives are a bit more expensive that production ones.
I asked a friend who owned a pre-production version of the 4016 to send me a picture of his stamp:
As you can see, his stamp is an exact match to mine!
Unfortunately I do not have high resolution pictures of a regular 4016 stamp on hand but I have that of an Al Mar Eagle 1005TS that was made around the same time as the 4016:
You will also notice that the sheath on my 4016 doesn't have the tiny holes on the belt loop than the one my friend has which is standard for the 4016.
So, what conclusion can we make from all this?
Well, normally an Al Mar prototype would have the words prototype engraved on the ricasso. But my 4016 also clearly has a pre-production stamp without having a pre-production number.
Could it be possible that the addition of the serrations was a last minute addition made before starting pre-production?
This is the most likely reason for the existence of this knife and in that case, until proven otherwise I may have actually gotten my hands on a unique variation of the Al Mar 4016 and if it is not unique it has to be rare as there seems to be no references to it in vintage catalogs or on Internet.
One last detail, the Fairbairn-Sykes design ultimately proved to be flawed. As much as it was an extremely deadly knife, two elements of its design aspect made it imperfect.
#1 The needlepoint tip proved to be very fragile and would easily break whether by dropping the knife on its tip or simply hitting bones when stabbing an enemy.
#2 The coke bottle shaped handle prevented from easily indexing the knife without looking at it. This proved to be crucial, imagine attempting to stab someone in between the ribs. If your blade was horizontal it wouldn't be much of a problem but if your blade was vertical, then there's no doubt that penetration would be night on impossible to achieve!
It is to be noted that W.E. Fairbairn later partnered with Rex Applegate to create the Applegate-Fairbairn Fighting Knife which was designed specifically to improve on the aforementioned flaws of the Fairbairn-Sykes.
Incidentally, the Applegate-Fairbairn was also produced by Al Mar Knives as the Al Mar 4002.
Now you know the tale of my potentially unique Al Mar 4016 and I will leave you with a couple more images because I know you like this far more than verbiage
Before getting into the nitty-gritty of things, let me give you some form of context about the knife, then we will get into more details of the different versions of this knife within the Al Mar collection. Last we will review the characteristics of this knife that make it, if not a unique model, a rarity among Al Mar Knives collections!
So, as you have read in the title, the knife we will be talking about today is a Fairbairn-Sykes.
W.E. Fairbairn was a British Royal Marine and police officer that developed a highly influential method of hand to hand combat for the Shanghai Municipal Police known as Défendu and authored the book All-In Fighting (aka Get Tough! In the US).
Eric Sykes worked together with W.E. Fairbairn in the Shanghai Municipal Police in the mid 1920s.
Fairbairn and Sykes have worked together for the British government during World War II to create and teach a method of fighting that would be used by the British, American and Canadian Commandos as well as SOE agents.
The goal was to use the most modern close-combat concepts such as point shooting, hand to hand fighting based on gross motor skills and knife fighting.
These techniques all had in common to be easy to teach/learn, and using modern medical knowledge so as to only retain the deadliest methods!
Within the concept of knife fighting, Fairbairn and Sykes designed a knife, for the use of allied commandos during World War II, that would turn out to be one the deadliest edges weapon of its time.
The design philosophy was simple, the F-S knife was to be a dagger with a 7 inches long blade. This figure was quite specific as the desired lethal penetration was 4 inches and the thickest military piece of clothing was the Soviet army overcoat which combined with the rest of the uniform would add up to 3 inches.
These two figures together would add up to 7 inches hence the blade length.
The blade had a needlepoint tip helping penetration.
The knife also featured a crossguard that varied in shape across three main configurations first "S" shaped, later becoming straight.
The handle was, for lack of a better word, coke bottle shaped. Initially checkered then ringed (27 rings).
The knife turned out to be extremely deadly but was also imperfect which we will speak about later on.
The knife is still in production to this day by Sheffield Knives but had many other makers both during and after World War II.
Al Mar Knives was among these makers and created several versions.
The most common one, the 4016, was black on black (meaning black blade and black handle) with serrations at the bottom of the blade. These serrations were an added feature to the original Fairbairn-Sykes and remind me of the ones that are on the Gerber Mark II.
This is actually a fairly relevant fact as when the Gerber Mark II was created and used for the sole purpose of killing during the Vietnam War, the knife was removed from the PX system due to it being too brutal and in bad taste.
A young designer working for Gerber at the time, added sawtooth serrations close to the hilt to the Gerber Mark II so that it could be marketed as a survival knife. This modification worked wonders and sales soon resumed.
The young designer was Al Mar himself!
We can now see the parallel between this story and the addition of serrations to the Al Mar 4016.
A few other variants of the Al Mar 4016 existed, all of them with serrations, the main difference being that the blade was not tinted black and that the handle was either brass or aluminium colored.
There is also a presentation version of the Al Mar Fairbairn-Sykes, the 6050 that has a non coloured blade, brass coloured handle and no serrations.
Now that you have a better view of the Al Mar 4016 background and context, let me introduce you to the one I have received today:
Can you notice something different about this knife?
Well yes! It is black on black but it does not feature any serrations at the bottom of the blade!
How is that possible you ask?
Well this one took me a while to crack. The gentleman who sold it to me bought it at a fair in the early to mid 1990s from a reseller who was one of the few selling the latest Al Mar Knives in his neck of the woods.
It has been used solely as a display item for the past 25 years (yes this knife is old enough to drink and to vote).
Outside of this nothing is known about this knife but fret not dear reader for there is one more clue in front of us!
A closer examination of the ricasso shows the infamous Seki-Japan stamp
The collectors used to vintage Al Mar Knives would start seeing an issue here.
This stamp is unusual for several reasons, but let's focus on only two.
#1 The lower branch of the "K" is too short and should be a little longer so that it would be aligned with its vertical bar.
#2 There is a horizontal bar on top of the "J"
At first I smelled something fishy and was afraid of getting an overly well made fake as there are plenty fake Fairbairn-Sykes knives as well as plenty of fake Al Mar Knives but it didn't make any sense as they would have taken the time to add the flat ricasso which I believe is unique to Al Mar's version of the Fairbairn-Sykes.
So I did more research and realised that the stamp was also used somewhere else. Pre-production Al Mar 4016!
Now for those who don't know, whenever a new model would be launched, Al Mar had 200 pre-production knives made, all of which were numbered with said numbered engraved on the blade and then distributed to resellers, good customers or friends in order to gauge the popularity of the model. Mind you that a pre-production version was exactly the same as a production version with the exception of the number.
Of note, because they are numbered, pre-production Al Mar Knives are a bit more expensive that production ones.
I asked a friend who owned a pre-production version of the 4016 to send me a picture of his stamp:
As you can see, his stamp is an exact match to mine!
Unfortunately I do not have high resolution pictures of a regular 4016 stamp on hand but I have that of an Al Mar Eagle 1005TS that was made around the same time as the 4016:
You will also notice that the sheath on my 4016 doesn't have the tiny holes on the belt loop than the one my friend has which is standard for the 4016.
So, what conclusion can we make from all this?
Well, normally an Al Mar prototype would have the words prototype engraved on the ricasso. But my 4016 also clearly has a pre-production stamp without having a pre-production number.
Could it be possible that the addition of the serrations was a last minute addition made before starting pre-production?
This is the most likely reason for the existence of this knife and in that case, until proven otherwise I may have actually gotten my hands on a unique variation of the Al Mar 4016 and if it is not unique it has to be rare as there seems to be no references to it in vintage catalogs or on Internet.
One last detail, the Fairbairn-Sykes design ultimately proved to be flawed. As much as it was an extremely deadly knife, two elements of its design aspect made it imperfect.
#1 The needlepoint tip proved to be very fragile and would easily break whether by dropping the knife on its tip or simply hitting bones when stabbing an enemy.
#2 The coke bottle shaped handle prevented from easily indexing the knife without looking at it. This proved to be crucial, imagine attempting to stab someone in between the ribs. If your blade was horizontal it wouldn't be much of a problem but if your blade was vertical, then there's no doubt that penetration would be night on impossible to achieve!
It is to be noted that W.E. Fairbairn later partnered with Rex Applegate to create the Applegate-Fairbairn Fighting Knife which was designed specifically to improve on the aforementioned flaws of the Fairbairn-Sykes.
Incidentally, the Applegate-Fairbairn was also produced by Al Mar Knives as the Al Mar 4002.
Now you know the tale of my potentially unique Al Mar 4016 and I will leave you with a couple more images because I know you like this far more than verbiage
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