It seems to have been a year of wire cutters and today we are on to the fourth set we have considered this year. However this pair is rather different in not having folding handles or a series of levers to give mechanical advantage to help with cutting wire. Instead they take the simpler option of just fitting very long arms to the cutters so that the pressure at the jaws is increased such that it will easily go through barbed wire:

The cutters have a set of wooden handles at the end of each arm, each with a lanyard loop built into the metal section:

The opposite end has the jaws themselves which are placed around the barbed wire to cut it:

The cutters have a maker’s mark on the handle for Charles Pugh :

I have found an uncoroborated source that suggests that this firm patented a pair of long handled cutters in 1917, but whether this patent is for this particular design or not I can’t say. The opposite arm of the cutters has a /|\ military ownership mark stamped into the metal:

These cutters seem very large and awkward when compared to the other designs in the collection, however they were also probably easier to use for their intended purpose as they had the reach and power in the jaws from the long arms to make cutting wire easy, other designs having the added complexity of needing to fold or to use levers for that important mechanical advantage.

This then is my little collection of wire cutters from the two world wars, and there are still other patterns to look out for and add to the collection…