More Cartridges

[assafx]

Considering that it would take several minutes per round even for quite an experienced handworker, and that the result would put a bullet up a bore that was also about 12 thou loose, with substantially reduced power and probably immediate toppling on exiting the muzzle, it seems astonishing to me that anyone tried this. Looks like a measure of genuine desperation.

Regards,

MikB

I wish i could run an experiment to see how long does it take and what are the results of such an action.

now i wonder if the person used a file and a knife or just a knife and i suspect it will take him about 5-10 min.

it leaves me with the usual question, who would do it?

generaly speaking i'm not that surprised, As bored as soldiers get sometimes (and with a lot of spare time on their hands), they have the time to do strange and stupid thing.

so it might have been just a stupid dare or one of them might have been curious or that a turkish soldier with some captured british ammo but lacking one for his rifle, improvised.

go figure...

do you know of such examples from the western front?

as i'm writing this, i'm remembering reading that the IDF in the mid 50's converted most of its Mauser 98k to fire 7.62X51 NATO round.

who ever fired this MK VI made it the crude way

[shippingsteel]

During the wartime period you would expect there to be nearly adequate supplies of ammunition and the comparable rifles close at hand.

I would guess this type of modification would more likely be done by some local Arab or Bedouin tribesman with a rifle that needed ammo.

When Australian troops were fighting in Palestine there were always reports of the locals looting the battlefields to secure prized weapons.

Cheers, S>S

[MikB]

I wish i could run an experiment to see how long does it take and what are the results of such an action.

now i wonder if the person used a file and a knife or just a knife and i suspect it will take him about 5-10 min.

it leaves me with the usual question, who would do it?

generaly speaking i'm not that surprised, As bored as soldiers get sometimes (and with a lot of spare time on their hands), they have the time to do strange and stupid thing.

so it might have been just a stupid dare or one of them might have been curious or that a turkish soldier with some captured british ammo but lacking one for his rifle, improvised.

go figure...

do you know of such examples from the western front?

as i'm writing this, i'm remembering reading that the IDF in the mid 50's converted most of its Mauser 98k to fire 7.62X51 NATO round.

who ever fired this MK VI made it the crude way

Reading a bloke's mind from what he makes is an imprecise art...

I think he had quite a good knife, some stone for abrasive - and a practiced hand and eye for carving whatever he wanted out of whatever he had...

The Western Front produced lots of handworked brass Trench Art items, some of it of excellent workmanship, but these were almost always either purely ornamental, or ornamental in combination with some minor functionality, such as a lighter or stick holder - and they weren't for single use and throwaway.

The difference with this item is that it's entirely functional and obviously only usable once. I'd guess it was done by a soldier with a background in such handwork, who had a 7,92 Mauser, was short of the proper ammunition but had some 303 ammunition and some time to work on it before engaging his enemy. Presumably this appears now to be an isolated example, but it would be interesting to know if other similar finds have been made in the immediate area.

Regards,

MikB

[Radlad]

During the wartime period you would expect there to be nearly adequate supplies of ammunition and the comparable rifles close at hand.

I would guess this type of modification would more likely be done by some local Arab or Bedouin tribesman with a rifle that needed ammo.

Cheers, S>S

Spot on. Ammunition is always harder to get than weapons are for inhabitants of remote places. I've seen similar alterations to .38sp , making them fit .38 acp. Forget any military alteration, this is a local using what they could get.

The 12 bore base is post wwII from the headstamp and they were made from brass washed steel , almost from the inception of the paper tube

[assafx]

Its always hard to assume who did it.

my gut feeling is with S^S, i think that locals might be the ones firing it. there's an arab village not far from where the excavation took place.

in other sites (such as the one i'm researching, there are some evidence of looting)

on the other hand, both the site and the village are on the way going down from Jerusalem towards Herodium.

this road leads mainly to the Judean desert, so i'll expect some fighting on the way or some rear guard action.

the problem is that the excavation only yielded the three cartridges hat i've posted earlier. i can't inspect the rest of the area since it was already turned over and houses were built on it.