50kg of Kerr sling buckles recovered

[RRPG]

Hi all

On a recent visit to a British army dump site in the UK, we stumbled upon an area where the base appeared to have dumped a couple of Kerr sling buckles. After two trips to the site, I had recovered over 50kg of them!! In among these buckles I also recovered around 15kg of pull through rods, along with numerous other sling buckles and a large number of 'tab, securing, bayonet', used to fit a spike bayonet scabbard to an 07 pattern frog.

Pictures attached of the 'pile' recovered, and of the results of cleaning a small proportion of them. It is going to take me a LONG time to get them all cleaned and preserved!

Information

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[browningautorifle]

So, when the Thompson went out of service, the troops designated took great bindles of Kerr slings to the dump and up ended them into the mess. Where the reposed until now...and we can't get them when we want one...

[RRPG]

This does indeed appear to be the case browningautorifle. Although, given the lack of material we have found, we have come to the conculsion it was just the buckles that were dumped, rather than the whole slings. We have found other areas where it was obvious the cloth went into the ground as well, (for instance I found an area with thousands of Vickers cloth belt brass strips and starter tabs in, which had obviously suffered some fire damage........so they basically chucked arms full of cloth belts in the pit and set light to them), but in the area where we found the Kerr sling buckles, no such evidence was found. I do have 50kg of them so, if you need a couple, please let me know

[browningautorifle]

the cloth went into the ground

You don't suppose they burnt them all do you? I guess you can tell by the color of the brass after. I know that IS the practice even today. Thank you for the offer, if I thought I could resurrect one I'd do it in a sec...

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

Great save!

[RRPG]

Well, if you spend a little time on them, you can get them looking like in the picture below. I don't normally get the relics back to shiny as I prefer them to keep their aged patina, (they are, after all, relics!), but as I found so many, thought I'd see just what level they could be restored to. As you can see, some are back to damn near 'as new'

Don't mind sending you some if you want to give it a try

[RRPG]

Thanks Hooked on History That's what it's about for me....saving history