The bayonet grip tool was just sooooo over engineered. We had one in the A in U cupboard of course but generally speaking everyone had a set of home made top and bottom punches that you'd keep on your bench and use as and when. I note the words SA&MG SECT TRENTHAM. That'll be the ±Base Workshop Small Arms and Machine Gun Section at Trentham.

You're right about the BFA's all being black after a good dose of firing blanks. The crunchies had to hand them back clean after exercises but in getting them clean they'd be using the tyupical rifle cleaning kit such as old nails, sand paper, wire wool,wire/steel brushes that they use for cleaning barnacles off the bottom of ocean liners etc etc. So they'd come back into the armouries clean - but with very little yellow paint on them! The Arms storemen used to dunk them in petrol, dry them out and give them a spray with yellow road marking paint. Then every so often they'd all go into the main workshop to be bead blasted and repainted in hard yellow sunkorite. That'd last a couple of weeks and round we'd go again.

BFA's were a constant source of accidents. Some would just go flying off into orbit around the outer planets, some would do the same but hit the 'enemy' and others would disintegrate if someone loaded a live round by accident. Accidents WILL happen but they kept trying to improve the build and safety regime. I suggested that they ought to accept that, say, 10 crunchies or DS would be killed on each exercise due to being hit by blank assisted bullets etc etc. So just write them off as exercise losses.