Perhaps my best recovery of this year.

I decide to go up the usual creek in the Dolomites after a rainy month and suddenly I see a handle sticking out of the mud. I pull it out and here it is an Austrian Mannlicher rifle bayonet with its original sheath and the wood handle perfectly preserved after almost 107 years!

Unlocking and extracting it from its scabbard was challenging and took be almost a day with Svitol, oxalic acid and hammering. Once I got the blade out, one side was perfect, while the other one had a lot of gravel mixed with rust, which, after a brief cleaning, I decided to leave not to touch the traces of history.

These objects raise questions like: "Who did it belong to?" "Will he have died in the battlefield?" "Will he have injured someone or worse killed?" "Will he have come back home or will he be lying under those rocks?"

Unanswered questions, forever kept only in this magnificent piece.