No pierced primers. All of the rims were right at .060", some Win '41 primers leaked
Once the rounds started exuding it was the death sentence - irrespective of age.
They would be de-bulleted and fired off and the brass and bullets sent for recycling.
Last edited by Alan de Enfield; 05-17-2025 at 03:45 AM.
Mine are not the best, but they are not too bad. I can think of lots of Enfields I'd rather have but instead of constantly striving for more, sometimes it's good to be satisfied with what one has...
Once the rounds started exuding it was the death sentence - irrespective of age.
They would be de-bulleted and fired off and the brass and bullets sent for recycling.
During EOD training we were warned of the extreme dangers of sweating Dynamite which could detonate at the slightest shock. One of our duties was to lend aid to Civilian authorities and there was always the chance of some spelunkers chancing upon an old case of the stuff given British Columbia's extensive mining history. Interestingly, as a child we were bombarded with regular PSA's on television regarding the dangers blasting caps represented. The ads were so common my brothers and I thought they must be laying around all over the place so we searched for some every weekend. Never found any buy sure as sh!t had we found one we would have figured out a way to set it off.
I recall reading in this forum that some degree of primer leakage was normal for .303 military ammunition, especially in wartime. Is it not so?
You can never tell 'what those foreigner armies get up to ', but as you can see from the document I posted - the British army, on its regular inspections, would reject rounds exhibiting signs of corrosion or exudation and they would be sentenced for scrap / disposal.
There are pages and pages and pages in the armourers manuals explaining when, where and how often ammunition must be checked and 'proved' (quantities from each batch fired and performance measured)
It's not much use having 10 million rounds in the stores if half of it is beyond its use by date, has swollen cases, leaking primers and, if it actually fires, is innacurate.
Mine are not the best, but they are not too bad. I can think of lots of Enfields I'd rather have but instead of constantly striving for more, sometimes it's good to be satisfied with what one has...
You can never tell 'what those foreigner armies get up to ', but as you can see from the document I posted - the British army, on its regular inspections, would reject rounds exhibiting signs of corrosion or exudation and they would be sentenced for scrap / disposal.
There are pages and pages and pages in the armourers manuals explaining when, where and how often ammunition must be checked and 'proved' (quantities from each batch fired and performance measured)
It's not much use having 10 million rounds in the stores if half of it is beyond its use by date, has swollen cases, leaking primers and, if it actually fires, is innacurate.
Fair enough as far as that goes. Very sensible.
But from what I can tell, as a reloader and engineer, the 1941 Winchester primers are very hard, and the 4 primer stabs are fairly aggressive. I think the primers in some cases are getting deformed enough to permit small amounts of leakage. Most likely it was this way from the beginning.
But from what I can tell, as a reloader and engineer, the 1941 Winchester primers are very hard, and the 4 primer stabs are fairly aggressive. I think the primers in some cases are getting deformed enough to permit small amounts of leakage. Most likely it was this way from the beginning.
Winchester ammunition has a very poor reputation in Britain.
Lots prior to 1941 were banned from front line use and relegated for 'practice use only' and post 1941 the dimensional variation meant, except for the Red Label, it was forbidden to be used in aircraft, but could be used by infantry.
Mine are not the best, but they are not too bad. I can think of lots of Enfields I'd rather have but instead of constantly striving for more, sometimes it's good to be satisfied with what one has...
During EOD training we were warned of the extreme dangers of sweating Dynamite which could detonate at the slightest shock. One of our duties was to lend aid to Civilian authorities and there was always the chance of some spelunkers chancing upon an old case of the stuff given British Columbia's extensive mining history. Interestingly, as a child we were bombarded with regular PSA's on television regarding the dangers blasting caps represented. The ads were so common my brothers and I thought they must be laying around all over the place so we searched for some every weekend. Never found any buy sure as sh!t had we found one we would have figured out a way to set it off.
I knew a gent who grew up on the north coast and whose childhood friend found some caps and invited him to come along for the festivities. For some reason he didn't go and his friend didn't come back, at least not alive.
“There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”
I knew a gent who grew up on the north coast and whose childhood friend found some caps and invited him to come along for the festivities. For some reason he didn't go and his friend didn't come back, at least not alive.
I think the public service announcements had the opposite effect of what was intended. As kids we were always looking for things that go "BOOM", especially after the Karens in the government banned firecrackers so blasting caps sounded like a viable option. At the age of 12 my friends and I had figured out how to make black powder although it was such a coarse mixture that it would never burn quickly so no "BOOM". My friends and I weren't about to give up on making BOOMS and in a stroke of luck while exploring an unmanned railway Speeder shed found a case of track torpedoes or railway detonators as they are known in Europe. Life was good again as we explored all the ways of setting them off. They are tremendously load as required for an engineer to hear them over the noise of a rumbling locomotive so you can imagine the Police switchboard lighting up as we reenacted WWII all over the North Shore of Vancouver. Great fun!
Interestingly, as a child we were bombarded with regular PSA's on television regarding the dangers blasting caps represented. The ads were so common my brothers and I thought they must be laying around all over the place so we searched for some every weekend. Never found any buy sure as sh!t had we found one we would have figured out a way to set it off.
I grew up in a mining town and shortly after high school worked as a blaster in the Sullivan Mine, the largest lead, zinc, and silver mine in the world at the time - over 250 miles of operating small gauge railway spread over the various levels. EVERYBODY in that mine had access to both caps as well as Forcite, Xactex, det cord etc in various sizes and flavors. We had no locked and audited magazines underground: it was just stacked close to where we needed to access it.
I have no doubt many lunch boxes left work with a cap and stick or two or perhaps a few dozen feet of B-line. There were regular stories of somebody being too close when one of their "C.I.L. Spinners" went off and a few troublesome trees or deadfall got sorted out with a cap and B-line.
Despite that amount of access, I don't recall anyone talking about somebody finding abandoned/stolen caps and explosives. Deliberate acts - there was a guy who committed suicide in his second floor apartment with a stick or two in the nearby town of Cranbrook in the later 70's. Luckily for everyone who lived around him, police had been called and managed to evacuate the rest of the apartment building before he decided to assume room temperature.
The real risk to kids were the CPR's railroad torpedoes, intended for placement on the top of the rail and held there by wire jaws until a locomotive's wheels rolled over it. They were easy to find along the tracks that ran above town at pullout points where linemen left their scooters and tools. The obvious solution was to shoot them from a distance with our Cooey Model 39 .22s; but more often than not we didn't get the expected results.
So being enterprising and thoughtful, we set them off by setting them on a rock and then dropping rocks on them from above on a trestle. I did that once and we all agreed afterwards that it was not the best of ideas.
A friend of ours, Terry, became known througout his time in High School as 'Fingers' - because he had only stubs of his thumb and little finger remaining on his right hand after playing around with what I think was a rail torpedo. Terry was a great guy, tough as nails, funny, a great friend, but never developed a sensible attitude towards danger - he was killed falling a few years after high school doing domino falling, working alone in the bush as a gypo logger.
Originally Posted by togor
PM
