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Old 02-19-2020, 12:58 PM
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Jacknola Jacknola is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: New Orleans
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This is a close-up photo of the Micarta handle of Lt. Corocan's Solingen carbon m-14 pictured in detail in earlier post (see page 10). The knife was bought in mid-1965 and carried in Vietnam.



This is almost certainly a predominantly black Micarta handle yet extensive handling and the photo effect I mentioned gives the flats of it brownish hue. It seems that the early Micarta material used a brown canvas of sorts in a ply (?) which is picked up in pixels by digital cameras. Where the material was heavily touched (finger grips) the oil and wear remained blackish. Later Micartas did not exhibit this characteristic.

What this means is that while the strange teethed m-14 certainly has a brown look in the photo, (and it may be brown pending in-hand examination) a collector should be cautious about judging brown Micarta solely from a single picture. Also be aware that a block of Micarta could be cut in several ways giving a different look to pieces from the same source. And each block was indeed different ... hence the very early reddish "brown Micarta," and the deeper chocolate " brown Micarta" used later.

This is just a heads up for collectors without the ability to actually closely examine a knife before buying it on-line. Joe and others can elaborate with greater expertise and experience. Ciao.

Last edited by Jacknola; 02-19-2020 at 02:09 PM.
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