I grabbed the wrong knife.this is the #23 gamemaster.the other is a #5
Thanks.You had me puzzled. That knife in your first picture indeed looked like Model 5, of which I've owned two. One of my favorite Randalls.
The brass butt cap on the Model 5 makes the knife butt heavy. Mine both had nickle silver guards and one had a Duralumin cap and the other just had a black Micarta handle drilled for a wrist thong. It had a five-inch blade. The other had a double hilt (guard) and a sharpened clip, seven inch blade. It was essentially a Model 1, less the dip in the blade spine just before the guard, a feature that I don't like.
I've never liked Model 23, but see why you'd find it effective in the field.
I had a pal in the USAF who ordered one of the kits that Randall sold back then. It was to build a Model 1, eight-inch blade, black Micarta and a crow's beak butt cap, Duralumin. The guard was NS, made a little smaller than Randall does, smaller quillons. Sheath was the usual Model A.
That knife was completed in the base hobby shop, and the man was a craftsman! It looked AT LEAST as good as if it'd been finished in Orlando.
He wanted it partly as a combat knife, but was headed for Thailand where he thought he might have to stab a tiger. I think he might have managed. We know about Harry Wolhuter knifing a lion, and his knife, belt, and the lion's hide are still displayed in Kruger Natl. Park. You can see it on the Net. And I know of a man who knifed a big grizzly bear in the neck with a puny Buck Model 110 folder! It seemed to paralyze the bear and he crawled over and got his rifle to finish it. That knife, bear blood and all, was sent to Chuck Buck, then Buck's President. He kept it framed on his wall for years.
Tigers are awful things, more inclined to be ambush predators than are lions, who may charge from a distance. A knife is a slender hope against either, but we have known cases where a man with a sharp knife prevailed!
Jim Corbett was concerned that a man-eating leopard that he was pursuing might attack him in Stygian darkness, where he couldn't use his rifle. So he bought an Afridi/Khyber knife that the Crown was selling after it was evidence in a murder trial. He relied on that long knife for emergencies.
Randall's Model 2 is very like a design recommended as an emergency hunting knife by a British hunter in India in the 1880's. I think he actually described the Wilkinson dagger. But Model 2 is pretty close.
It also looks a LOT like the daggers found in King Tut's tomb, one made of gold. But the iron-bladed one has the same stepped blade like Model 2. Whichever Roman said there's nothing new under the sun must have seen that Egyptian dagger and seen that in the future, Randall would offer his Model 2!
Another Roman, Pliny the Elder, said, "There's always something new out of Africa." That wouldn't be Model 2. It'd more likely be knives in the Loveless style by Piet Grey and other modern South African knife makers.
Model 2 is a good pure fighting knife that'd also fare well in defense against dangerous animals.
And I think a Randall Model 2 was the knife that Red Grant had in Ian Fleming's, From Russia, With Love. Fleming said that it was an American knife, an excellent weapon. And Fleming had been sent a Randall!
He also owned a First Pattern Fairbairn-Sykes dagger, and I believe that Randall wanted him to see how he'd made a stronger dagger along those lines.
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