Cleaning up Somme ground-dug 303 Great War SAA.

[Strangely Brown]

Roger, I'm reminded of the late Pete Bloom who found a pile of bullets in a block house on the Western Front; somebody had evidently snapped the pullets off fragile brass cases and had made a small fire utilising the cordite.
Pete bought the bullets back to blighty and cleaned them up in his media tumbler, after reloading them in good brass he shot the lot during the NRA summer historic meeting in his smellie and wrote up the experience in Guns Review.

[Roger Payne]

I was with him Mick! It was at the old abandoned trench system & museum at Croonart Wood in the Salient, many years ago. I owe Pete a great debt of gratitude as I had wanted to visit the battlefields for years but lacked that bit of pluck to take the plunge & drive over there myself in my own car. So, he kindly took a couple of other friends & I over with him (one of whom is on the Advisory Panel of this forum;-) ), which showed me just how easy it was.......& that opened the floodgates!

I ought to point out that I found/obtained the rounds shown a long time ago. They are dig ups, but were not brought back recently. I would not dream of attempting to bring them back now as border control regulations are so tight. Before, I was lucky in having acquaintances who were involved with EOD/déminage (both in the UK & in France).

[Alan de Enfield]

It's generally covered under UK firearms legislation regarding live ammunition, it's a case of application of common sense really.

And, being an RFD means that Roger has no real problems with 'accounting' for ammunition.


My brother In law is a 'Journalist RFD' and is sent Rifles, ammunition, scopes and 'stuff' from most worldwide major manufacturers for review. He has 10,000's of rounds of 'assorted' ammunition, 'part boxes' of pretty much most calibres. They usually want the rifles returning but ammunition and accessories are just left to clutter up his gun-room.

He did a review of My L42 but didn't have any 7.62 so I supplied some - I didn't want him using some 'hot' 308.

He recently came back from 2 weeks in Argentina after being invited to a 'Goat Hunt' and to test out a new rifle.
He seems to spend a lot of time in Germany and Scandinavia at the invitation of European manufacturers.

Its a tough life but someone has to do it.

[Ovidio]

You have a lot of faith...
But we all do, ain’t we?

[Roger Payne]

Alan, in fact I specifically ran my proposal to work my way through all this battlefield SAA & gradually 'pull' it all with my FEO at my last RFD renewal. He was quite ok with that.........& being realistic, it's not safe to shoot so what else is there to do with it other than destroy it? I shall keep a nice selection & probably part with the remainder, once it is all safe & cleaned up..... There are some interesting rounds in among them, including some 1917 dated air service ball & tracer that were recovered from the site of an old RFC airfield.....

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

common sense.

Whats's that?

[Alan de Enfield]

Whats's that?

Dunno, I believe its pretty uncommon

[Surpmil]

I have long thought it would be an interesting exercise to analyse a comprehensive selection of WWI cases with an xray spectrometer to determine exactly what their alloys were.

It would be interesting to know if such analysis would confirm the observations made by those who were there that certain brands of ammo were notorious for jamming etc.

The extent to which such problems were caused by improper annealing etc. after manufacture would be harder to determine of course.

[Roger Payne]

Funny you should say that.......it is only anecdotal of course, & could be influenced by a number of variables, but from handling thousands of these dug up rounds over the years, I have noticed a few things that generally hold true.

Specifically; that the brass of some manufacturers stands the 'pulling' procedure better than others. Presumably some brass has become more brittle than other, & becomes more prone to neck splits. Secondly, as a general rule, pre-1917 brass seems to be of better quality than 17/18 dated brass, though perhaps this is not surprising. The brass of US contract ammo is particularly prone to neck splits. Most of the US rounds I have found or acquired have had split necks even before I put them in a kinetic puller.

I realise that there are many factors that could influence these observations; original alloy composition, original heat treatment, ground conditions, exposure to potentially corrosive fertilisers, & so on, but they seem to hold more or less true from what I've seen.

[browningautorifle]

certain brands of ammo were notorious for jamming etc.

I thought it was because some ammo wasn't so close to spec? Tolerance...