Cleaning funnel info?

[stencollector]

I'm not sure the exact use is, as I have not read the handbook cover to cover. Here is a scan of the parts manual for the 25 showing the CM4266 funnel. I note that on the Gunner webstore, he says it is for filling the buffers, etc. Funnel Filling - The Gunner

[Strangely Brown]

I did four years on 25 pdr's, two of them in boys service and had to do an additional 3 months as I was too young to muster.
The powers that be decided that I should work with the REME gun fitter sergeant which I did for that period servicing the 25 Pdrs that we had. (We had a lot of them!)

I don't recall ever seeing the funnel described, instead we used a can like the one illustrated, albeit without the advertising.
After this period I got posted to the depot regiment at the School of Artillery where I found the battery I was in had six Abbot 105 mm SP guns and wait for it....seven 25 Pdrs!

During that time I don't ever recall seeing that type of funnel.
I wonder if they were withdrawn from service and replaced with an item like the one illustrated?

If we needed something in those days and it wasn't in the system it was usually procured through local purchase. i.e. we sent somebody down to Halfords to buy it!

[browningautorifle]

If we needed something in those days and it wasn't in the system it was usually procured through local purchase

So did we, thus creating the mystery and arguments of "Well we had one and it was issued"...except it wasn't.

[stencollector]

I only have the 1950 parts identification list here, but at work we have a few other versions, including war dated copies. I do know that the majority of the tools for the artillery will have the CM prefix to them. I am not sure if that prefix carries over to the machine guns, but it is certainly common to the artillery pieces.

It's my hope to have the complete EIS for the gun. I did recently get a small disappointment when I bought an example of the 11" adjustable spanner (the gun was supposed to have an 11" and a 15" spanners as part of the tool kit). The spanner showed up with a few other pieces of EIS that I ordered from abroad, and the spanner was a commercial made example in red, and made in Germany to boot. So the search for a broad-arrow marked adjustable spanner will continue. Even better would be a Canadian example, perhaps made by ETF.

I have a funny feeling that there was a line drawing of the leather funnell in the Vickers MMG parts list. I'm sure that it also showed a canvas 'lay flat' water bucket. Oh, no........ please don't tell me that someone in the universe collects lay-flat water buckets.......

I can't speak to the Vickers use of the collapsible canvas watrer bucket, but again, there is a markV canvas bucket issued as part of the CES of the 25 pdr gun under part number JH1/JA0213. I recently found a box of them at my favorite surplus yard and grabbed several variations of them. I also have a Cdn made example, as well as a US made example of canvas waterbuckets. I don't think that makes me a bucket collector however, more likely just a militaria hoarder.