Hand-Forged Commando Dagger, Oval Guard

It is built on that pattern, and it is not a reproduction of one. The Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife was designed in 1940 by William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes, two former Shanghai Municipal Police officers who had spent decades in a city with a genuinely violent policing environment, and it was made in quantity by Wilkinson Sword for British commando and special forces units. Its hilt is the small oval guard, ribbed grip and domed pommel you see here, and that arrangement is what makes the design recognisable at a glance eighty years later. Ours takes that hilt and puts it on a much longer blade, in Nepali spring steel, forged by hand rather than produced to a wartime specification. If you want a faithful F-S reproduction, buy one from a maker who specialises in them. If you want this pattern hand-forged and at scale, that is what this is.

The blade could pass for one; the hilt could not. An Arkansas toothpick is an American type of the Bowie era, a large straight double-edged dagger with a needle point, and by blade alone this fits the description well. But the hilts are nothing alike. A period toothpick carries a simple crossguard and a plain wood, bone or horn handle in the American idiom of the 1830s to 1860s. This has a small oval guard, a ringed turned grip and a domed pommel cap, which is a twentieth century British arrangement and instantly recognisable as one to anybody who collects. We call things by what they actually are, so this is a commando dagger. If a proper Arkansas toothpick is what you are after, tell us and we will forge one with the correct hilt.

Because it is built as a display piece rather than a reproduction, and we would rather say so than let the discrepancy sit there unexplained. Nearly doubling the blade changes the object in two ways. It stops being concealable, which was the entire premise of the original: a knife meant to be carried under clothing and brought out at close quarters. And it moves the balance point forward, so a twelve inch blade on a seven inch hilt feels nose-heavy where the original feels quick and neutral. What you gain is presence, and on a wall or in a case that is not a small thing. What you lose is fidelity and handling. The seven or eight inch build costs the same, is closer to the historical proportion, and is the one we would put on our own wall.

Because on this design a large guard would be a liability. The pattern was arranged around drawing quickly from under clothing, and a wide crossguard catches on a coat, a pocket edge and the mouth of the scabbard on the way out. So the guard is cut down to just enough steel to stop the hand travelling onto the blade when a thrust lands and comes to a stop, which is the one thing a dagger guard must do. It is a good example of how a design intended for a specific use ends up looking the way it does. It is also worth knowing as a general point about daggers: unlike a sword, a dagger's guard is not there to meet another blade, so it can be as small as its one job allows, and every maker's decision about how much steel to leave tells you what they thought the knife was for.

So the hand knows where it is without looking. Parallel rings cut around the full circumference give purchase in any rotation, which matters when a grip is round and there are no flats to index against, and they hold through a wet or gloved hand where a smooth turned handle would slip. The original used a checkered brass grip for the same reason. Our fishtail guard dagger page covers how a grip tells the hand its orientation in more detail, since it is the same underlying problem solved a different way.

It is one of the most copied knife designs in existence, and most of the copies are poor, so this is worth knowing whoever you buy from. Four tells. First, the guard: on a bad one it is cast zinc or pot metal rather than steel, and you can see it in the slightly soft edges and the way it rings dead when tapped. Second, the guard-to-blade joint: it should be tight enough that you cannot see daylight or work it with a thumbnail. Third, the grip: a hollow cast grip is much lighter than a solid turned one and sounds hollow when tapped near the pommel. Fourth, the pommel cap, which should sit dead flush against the grip with no gap and no rotation; on this pattern the pommel is what draws the whole hilt tight, so any movement there means the assembly is already loose. Apply all four to ours as readily as to anyone else's.

It descends from a design that was, and we sell it as a collector's and display piece. We are not going to pretend the history is something else, and we are also not going to write technique or tactical copy around it, because that is not what this shop is for and it is not why our customers buy. What we can tell you honestly is that a twelve inch blade on this hilt would be a poor choice for the purpose the original served anyway, for the reasons set out above. People buy this because the pattern is iconic, because it is hand-forged rather than stamped out, and because it looks superb on a wall. Those are the reasons we make it.

Both edges as standard. The blade carries a central ridge with the faces falling away to each edge, and tapers evenly from the guard to the point rather than running parallel and then dropping to a tip. The section is deliberately slender, because the whole design is arranged around penetration rather than cutting, and a narrow cross-section is also what keeps a blade of this length light enough to handle. The trade is that it is not a robust blade: it will bend if you lever with it and the last few inches are fine by design. If a double edge is a problem where you live, we will sharpen one side and leave the other blunt at no extra cost.

We cannot answer that for you, and this piece needs more care than most. Three provisions can apply. Many jurisdictions treat double-edged daggers as their own restricted category regardless of size. Blade length thresholds apply independently on top, and 12 inches is above the ordinary knife allowance in most places. And some legislation names fighting knives, stilettos or commando knives specifically, by design rather than by dimension. Import rules are frequently different again from possession and carry rules. Check all of them for your own address before ordering. If length is the obstacle, the seven or eight inch build costs no more and is closer to the original anyway.

5160 high-carbon spring steel, the same stock our smiths use for kukris and swords, forged down from leaf spring in the Nepali tradition. It is oil-quenched and then tempered back, producing a blade that holds an edge but stays tough rather than brittle. Toughness matters more than usual on a blade this narrow, because a slender section loaded sideways is exactly where a hard, brittle steel snaps and a properly tempered one flexes and returns. It is not stainless and it will take a patina with use.

It is the only twentieth century piece we make, and that is the whole distinction. Our bollock daggers are medieval civilian sidearms, our quillon daggers are medieval knightly ones built like small swords, and our parrying dagger is a Renaissance companion weapon meant to be used alongside a rapier. All of those are historical types. This one is a modern military design, and it looks modern: no ornament, no decoration, a hilt shaped entirely by function and a blade with nothing on it at all. If you want a dagger that reads as old, take one of the others. If you want the one design on the bench that a hundred million people would recognise on sight, take this.

Close, but not identical, and that is the nature of forged work. The blade profile is drawn out by eye against a pattern, the taper is ground by hand, the guard is cut and fitted individually, and the grip is turned one at a time so the ring spacing varies slightly. Timber differs board to board in colour and figure. What does not vary is the specification: length, steel, construction, heat treatment and sharpness are held to the same standard on every piece. Our kukri machete page sets out in more detail what can and cannot differ between two blades from the same bench.