Bayonets from Brazil: IMBEL Knives

Although not much into knives, as a whole, I’ve found myself always carrying one or another to the field while participating, as a guest journalist, in military maneuvers all around Brazil along decades. Even if never used for any throat-cutting, sentinel-dispatching action, my blades did frequently prove very handy to cut tree branches to make improvised clothes hangers in camps, open food cans, help transform pineapples into valuable hydrating complements to field rations, turning barbecued meats (yes, different kinds…) into added-on proteins to help me keep on following the younger guys, etc.. Since I’ve figured that most of the times I was carrying a locally-made IMBEL – Indústria de Material Bélico do Brasil product, I’ve decided to show and briefly describe to TFB readers some of the blades that have come out of the company’s Fábrica de Itajubá (Itajubá Factory), in Minas Gerais State, in the last 40-or-so years. It’s interesting to notice that most people expect gun writers to automatically become blade experts, but this is not my case: I’m just a plain, average knife user. Enjoy the pictures, though.

The FC-IA2

When IMBEL started developing its 5.56x45mm and 7.62x51mm IA2 rifles in 2008-2010, the opportunity was also taken to create a bayonet that could double as a general utility/combat knife. The result is the FC-IA2, which is not only accompanying the weapons being supplied to the Brazilian Army, but is also finding good acceptance in its utility roles with the local Armed and LE Forces, plus with the general public, since it is commercially available direct from the manufacturer and from private dealers.

The FC-AMZ (from Amazonas) is a larger version of the FC-IA2 model, equally compatible with use as a bayonet, though this capacity is present, of course, as a “just-in-case” feature. It’s no small coincidence that most of its characteristics were either suggested or tested by the guys from Brazilian Army’s CIGS – Centro de Instrução de Guerra na Selva (Jungle Warfare Training Center), located in Manaus, Amazonas State, with additional inputs from SpecOps personnel. Construction material and details for the knife and sheath are duplicates from those of the smaller counterpart.

Produced at IMBEL’s Fábrica de Itajubá for many years (1980s-1990s), the locally-called Faca de Trincheira Mk.2 (Mk.2 Trench Knife) is an unsophisticated — but highly popular — article still found among the everyday items carried by military and LE guys in Brazil. My battered example was once (but never authorized by me) mishandled by a guy who started using a motorized sharpening wheel to “fix it” before he was stopped, the scars remaining to this day. The knife features a leather-rings handle and a no-frills sheath of the same material.