Perhaps Flechette's from a nice 12 bore?
Cordite
- Thread starter Heym SR20
- Start date
We had a teacher at school who said that during his national service he had been at a place in Wales where they were 'disposing' explosives. They got fed up and - being young lads - decided to set off 10,000 tons of explosives at one time. Apparently windows were blown out twenty miles away. Nothing about it in the press, of course....
Len the dog
Well-Known Member
That would make it one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history and considerably bigger than the one that was designed to destroy Heligoland, so I think your teacher was either talking BS or confusing tons for lbs.
Indeed!
He was our physics teacher, so he knew the difference between tons and lbs. As for him b*ll sh****g, he was not known for it.
Given the way the powers that be measure atomic explosions this would have been a 10 Kiloton explosion. a little bit less than what did Hiroshima in. I'm pretty sure my father would have mentioned this considering that our home village was well within the blast radius of said explosion.
There was a little old lady who would knock her plaster off with a broom at 4pm to get compo from the disposal company, they got fed up with her complaints so went along and watched her through her window knocking the ceiling plaster off in time with the explosion at 4pm..
There was the incident with the large quantity of tank? shell casings which were going to be weighed in to the scrappy for the brass, but got rejected due to the primers still being in them. This was solved with the proper application of a pin punch and hammer. They had a production line going with lads handing about 5 guys suitably equipped. After a while of this there would be a small pile of unburnt powder build up under where they were doing this, and occasionally this would be set off by a shell primer spitting a spark into it, resulting in a genie(remember those?)
This was all done in a safe and proper manner as Health and Safety hadn't been invented yet
Foxyboy43
Well-Known Member
I think you will find that Mrs Merkel let quite a few of them in fairly recently…….
How we do it nowadays. This was just a warmup (10kg at a time) practice for the big ones. I had a video link to one of those, (awesome) but seem to have lost it.
They appear to be using Chemring systems to set it off. What fun. It seems to be quite a business in the UK, several private companies dong it, as well as the military.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal
Of course, it may be more economical to donate it to another country, having an immediate pressing need for the stuff to use.
They appear to be using Chemring systems to set it off. What fun. It seems to be quite a business in the UK, several private companies dong it, as well as the military.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal
Of course, it may be more economical to donate it to another country, having an immediate pressing need for the stuff to use.
Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
Here is one of those WW2 bullets that had been hollow pointed, I cut it down the centre to see the construction, not sure what the inner stuff at the tip is except it seems not to be metal.
palmer_mike
Well-Known Member
Mark V11 .303?
Tip filler sometimes aluminium or paper or a variety of other light materials…..
Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
Just to reawaken the thread here is some powder that was taken from German WW2 8x57 rounds the Reich had spread the production of nitro powder all around the country and it was a made as a dough that was rolled out to a very thin sheet then cut into tiny squares. I have read somewhere that this powder was then collected and mixed at a central point with the other factories squares to get a similar burn rate per days output. Interesting to me is the square form as it never shows up today in modern powders.
palmer_mike
Well-Known Member
Vectan still produce a number of ‘square flake’ powders……..
Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
Their website only lists A0 for rifle but it seems to be a fast powder more for pistol shotguns than rifles as the velocity is way down.
palmer_mike
Well-Known Member
To be honest I can’t be bothered to research and find a more suitable powder.
You did say ‘Interesting to me is the square form as it never shows up today in modern powders’
It’s in use by vectan in a number of their current powders.
The last time I saw this form was in PPU 8x57mm surplus heavy-ball (196 or 198gn FMJBT) rounds back in the 80s or 90s. This was pre PPU making its existing ranges with commercial quality brass and tubular powders, and most likely from when Yugoslavia still existed as a unified state. The FYR still used the 8X57mm in various military applications including the Zastava M53 belt-fed machinegun, a pirated copy of the German WW2 MG42. It was typical European milspec with Berdan-primed cases, priced at £10 / 100 in my local gunshop IIRC. As with all military 8X57 heavy-bullet loads, it kicked like a mule in rifles, in my case a Portuguese m1904/39 one of whose attractions had been cheap surplus ammunition. I pulled some of these rounds and tried reducing the charge, but anything more than a 4 or 5% drop saw poor case obturation in the chamber with the action and brass left covered in soot, and poor performance - and still producing a shoulder-bruising kick.
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