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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

shell fuses


madman

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Here are 4 of mine i have had these a while now my dad spent ages cleaning them up a few years back i have also now started to clean 1 up myself will add photo when complete

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May be a daft question , but is there ANY danger in heating them up and smacking them with a hammer? I have a few but always cautious of doing anything with them!

Tony

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Here are 4 of mine i have had these a while now my dad spent ages cleaning them up a few years back i have also now started to clean 1 up myself will add photo when complete

very nice, I have one of those turkish fuses as well (far left in pic) looks like yours has taken a hit to the nose cone but should easily come apart. The two beehive fuses have had the bottom part cut off them :l but still very nice condition. I can give you some pics of that turkish fuse stripped down if you are interested.

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May be a daft question , but is there ANY danger in heating them up and smacking them with a hammer? I have a few but always cautious of doing anything with them!

Tony

a fuse's role is not to explode, its basically to ignite a charge. so pretty much all it does is produce sparks. (this is for ww1/2 fuses, some of the modern fuses are a bit different).

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a fuse's role is not to explode, its basically to ignite a charge. so pretty much all it does is produce sparks. (this is for ww1/2 fuses, some of the modern fuses are a bit different).

Nonsense! The gaine on a fuze is a detonator and is an explosive device. Should you have an fuze that has not functioned the gaine is quite capable of taking your fingers off.if not worse..

Fortunately, the vast majority of WWI fuzes are from fired shells where the fuze has functioned as it is meant to and are thus harmless.

Regards

TonyE

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Nonsense! The gaine on a fuze is a detonator and is an explosive device. Should you have an fuze that has not functioned the gaine is quite capable of taking your fingers off.if not worse..

Fortunately, the vast majority of WWI fuzes are from fired shells where the fuze has functioned as it is meant to and are thus harmless.

Regards

TonyE

Exactly.. a fuses role is to ignite a charge, the first charge being a gain. the gain attaches to the fuse- no gain, no danger.

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So potential danger if the gain still attached?

I did find a perfect fuse head with a complete gain , many years ago on The Somme, was told in France it was safe ( by a local expert) so brought it home and displayed until a good chap on this forum advised it was live and dangerous, local Police not very happy with me!

Think majority are safe but one needs to be careful when giving advice on handling such items. I learnt a valuable lesson, if not sure leave well alone.

Just thought what could have happened if I had heated up the fuse head as per video, with the gain attached, BANG.

Tony

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post-86960-0-50548600-1376562317_thumb.j

This was the majority of my collection about a year ago :P today I doubt I'd get half my stuff on the desk :P

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Some very nice shell fuses posted in this thread. What's the preferred method of cleaning these from their battlefield found state? I have a bag of uncleaned fuses (bought in Ieper, not found by me) and have had some good advice in the past about using acids etc - but unfortunately this is not hugely practical given where I'm living at the moment. Any other suggestions? Personally my favourites are the large German Dopp fuses.

PS> Nice collection evo - quite a lot of variety there!

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Some very nice shell fuses posted in this thread. What's the preferred method of cleaning these from their battlefield found state? I have a bag of uncleaned fuses (bought in Ieper, not found by me) and have had some good advice in the past about using acids etc - but unfortunately this is not hugely practical given where I'm living at the moment. Any other suggestions? Personally my favourites are the large German Dopp fuses.

PS> Nice collection evo - quite a lot of variety there!

Check this:

I know you don't want to use acid, but you can still use a wire brush to get rid of the dirt, then polish with brass or other metal polish- use the metal polish with wire wool though, it works better than polishing for hours with a cloth. I would also recommend soaking in a tub of vinegar with a table spoon of salt, but it will take a couple of days to make a difference (where as acid will only take 10 minutes) then polishing with wire wool and brasso.

If you like the German DOPP fuses check out my youtube page (youtube.com/user/evo7125), I've got a few that fully field strip (you can see a couple of them in the pic above (under the German m35 helmet).

hope that helps,

and PS thanks :) I try and get a bit of variation in the collection, makes it more interesting in my opinion!

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