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Re: Austrian bayonet scabbards
Excavated sheet iron throats with hook and sheet iron tips with ball ends from Austrian-made leather-covered Lorenz socket bayonets scabbards do show up from time to time on eBay. Presumeably they were recovered from American Civil War sites but only the digger knows for sure and from where. More and more European finds are making their way to the United States and the provenances of those items usually get lost or misrepresented.
The blades and scabbards generally do not interchange. I bought a Lodgewood Austrian scabbard, probably from the warehouse cache, and walked it around a gun show or two to find a blade that would go in it (length and width) also with a socket diameter that would fit on the Lorenz rifle they were joining.
The Austrian infantry of the 1850s carried the scabbards on white buff shoulder belts, as is illustrated in period photos in the monograph on the Austrian army put out in the series produced in England (Osprey?). I have not yet seen a surviving Austrian scabbard attributed to CW use with a waistbelt frog still with it, but am very eager to hear of one. A collector/shooter friend conjectured that the Confederates may not have used one, simply sliding the scabbard behind the waistbelt with the hook keeping it in place. Original US-made Lorenz scabbards, in at least 2 styles, are encountered with some regularity out there today.
Dean Nelson
1st MD Infantry, CSA, N-SSA
Excavated sheet iron throats with hook and sheet iron tips with ball ends from Austrian-made leather-covered Lorenz socket bayonets scabbards do show up from time to time on eBay. Presumeably they were recovered from American Civil War sites but only the digger knows for sure and from where. More and more European finds are making their way to the United States and the provenances of those items usually get lost or misrepresented.
The blades and scabbards generally do not interchange. I bought a Lodgewood Austrian scabbard, probably from the warehouse cache, and walked it around a gun show or two to find a blade that would go in it (length and width) also with a socket diameter that would fit on the Lorenz rifle they were joining.
The Austrian infantry of the 1850s carried the scabbards on white buff shoulder belts, as is illustrated in period photos in the monograph on the Austrian army put out in the series produced in England (Osprey?). I have not yet seen a surviving Austrian scabbard attributed to CW use with a waistbelt frog still with it, but am very eager to hear of one. A collector/shooter friend conjectured that the Confederates may not have used one, simply sliding the scabbard behind the waistbelt with the hook keeping it in place. Original US-made Lorenz scabbards, in at least 2 styles, are encountered with some regularity out there today.
Dean Nelson
1st MD Infantry, CSA, N-SSA
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