MkI Bren field expedient recoil spring fix

[WallyG.]

Surprised... found a MkI Bren field expedient - kinked/short recoil spring fix.

Was cleaning the copius Cosmo from the slide group of a Greek sourced MkI (US demil - wood covered in Greek lettered graffiti) and when I removed the recoil spring cap... out popped a 1943 steel cased .45 acp round and a somewhat crushed MkI recoil spring. The spring had compressed the ball round back into the case as far as the powder would let it... and the primer was still live! Not many places to hide a time capsule on a Bren... but some industrious soul managed to do so. Imagine the surprise if that round had gone off in the recoil tube!

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[TactAdv]

Sorry......from my experiences, this strikes me more as a crude but planned unpleasant surprise gift, than any kind of mechanical "fix" mentality at play here.

Somebody set up a surprise gift, that just luckily didn't work as planned. Live round.....live primer with contact area......toward moving action parts.....hidden in a containment vessel tube.......would give a nasty surprise right up against your face/hands.....

-TomH

[Peter Laidler]

I thought long and hard about that too Tom but the inside of the return spring cup on a Mk1 gun is slightly concave internally so the chance of the primer being struck was pretty remote. But you never know.........

[WallyG.]

Projectile was towards spring... primer to the rear.

[tankhunter]

I remember stripping down an Ex Indian Army MAG 58 LMG once, for refurbishment. When I stripped out the Buffer unit, some of the Bellvue washers washers were missing (They face concave face. to concave face, to act like. A sort of Spring, to absorb excess energy for the recoiling parts) in their place, I discovered a Rubber Pencil Erazer!........I could only wonder at the rate of fire of that gun. & how many feedarms it might have destroyed. In that condition!....

[Vincent]

I have only found a Bubba’d Mac held together with rusty nails and a blood spattered AK parts kit with a round in the butt where the cleaning kit normally goes.

I guess that last round wasn’t needed.