Peter--a question on my L42 transit chests

[breakeyp]

Three days of rain resulted in a flooded basement and an opportunity to clean up and look at four olive drab L42 transit chests. It was so bad the ducks were taking cabs.

Three were of identical construction and two had a curious red paint exactly covering the upper right hand corner metal reinforcement on the lid. I assume it is an inventory mark of some sort. Comments?

The other box was of the same construction but totally rebult with one blacksmithed latch--not three and two barn door hinges instead of three. Witness marks indicate the the normal hardware was installed at one time. The rubber cushions were replaced with a coarse carpet like material. It looks like your lot has been playing with it. I wonder what they needed the original hardware for. If they could only talk! best, p.

Information

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[Peter Laidler]

Unlike the No4T chests where the ironmongery was always available from the G1 section of the VAOS lists, the same was never available for the L42 chests. Additionally, the chest was a 'starred item' (remember those Tankie/Skippy!) and as a result, if the chest was damaged beyond repair, you couldn't get another unless you ZF'd the whole CES - rifle an' all!

They were built by a bunch of cowboys in Mansfield as I seem to remember, who failed miserably until they sub contracted the work out to Remploy in Cambridge (?). Anyway, back to the story......... None of the fittings were 'off the shelf' so Remploy upped the price and made virtually every part. This made repairing them difficult especially after the usual rough handling meted out by the cack-handed RAF air loaders and the RAOC blanket stackers. So far as I remember, the foam seal had to be cut to fit from xxxxing great big sheets of the stuff (we used it as sleeping rolls too) and the hasps/staples, corners and handle supports made individually if they needed repair

The red corners are some storeman using it to identify which company it was issued to.

As a bit of an aside re the chests, I remember the manure hitting the fan when one of the fitters found one of these chests, pulled the insides out, scrapped it, then adapted the box to carry a load of the ARV (a recovery tank) equipment. Not a wise move and there was a lot of explaining to do and paperwork too. Luckily, rank has its priveliges and I was able to what we call 'cover his ars............, er...., bottom'. But it did mean that the whole CES was returned to Ordnance

[breakeyp]

Many thanks, I knew you would have the story. Best, p.

[Peter Laidler]

The irony was that when the L42's were finally returned when they were declared obsolete, they could be shipped back as just the rifle because a lot of the CES was to be utilised with the L96. As a result, there were loads of these big, heavy long flat chests everywhere that ended up as scrap. Being plywood, they weren't even any good as firewood!

[jmoore]

breakyp, does your chest at all resemble RobD's in the thread linked below? (Last photo of post #1)

L42A1 with unusual fore end?





(Image stolen from RobD's thread linked above- I didn't know if it was possible, but it worked! Kinda big, though...)

[Peter Laidler]

JM. Give me a clearer picture or image of that number beginning A 0003?? or whatever it is and I'll tell you which unit it came from.

Talking of which, same picture.........., those top, hooked latches were another one-off that were never available and were ALWAYS snapping off. We had a lot of the hook parts made that we'd braze to the existing broken plate. In fact there was an EMER misc. instruction about these following a repair suggested by David Lines. He got £75 or so for suggesting it. If you have a repaired one, that's the story........

There, another useless piece of not exactly Lee Enfield information!

[jmoore]

JM. Give me a clearer picture or image of that number beginning A 0003?? or whatever it is and I'll tell you which unit it came from.

It's RobD's photo, and, I presume, transit chest. That's all I have- In actual fact, that photo is really an experiment that wasn't really expected to successfully transfer from his thread to this one!

[skiprat]

the latches , catches and I think the hinges are the same as fitted to the new'er L7 (GPMG) transit boxes. (the old GPMG boxes were fitted with the same latches as the No 15 chest!!)
Are ther any plans for the L42 chest anywhere? I've just finished a No15 chest and would like to make one of these (for an Enforcer (type))

[breakeyp]

This is a picture of the standard L42 trransit case with the red inventory marking as described in my original post.


This is a picture of the odd hasp added to the reworked L42 transift chest.


Reworked L42 chest with different hinges.

Reworked L42 chest with odd cushioning material.

[Peter Laidler]

Ah, yes........... that's the old horsehair matting or reasonably modern synthetic horsehair matting. That stuff was available for all sorts of repairs, usually stuffing in AFV seats as it was fireproof. I'd just rip it out and go back to the hard foam neoprene sheet material that was originally used. To be honest, I'd just strip the chest and rebuild it using the correct hardware/hinges. You won't find original stuff (but see skippy's thread above.....) but the original hinges were just a readily available commercial item, If you had a few sets of the hardware made up for yourself I'm sure that you'd sell on the remaining sets at a bit of a profit