World War 1 shell

ally

ally

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I was looking though my Great Uncles stuff from World War 1 and found this:
anyone know what kind of shell it is.

it was about 11 inches long.

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Before any other/more knowledgable guys can identify this, your round appears to be still live. Personally, I would not be handling it too much.
 
Made me nervous too, its in the hands of a friend of mine at CFB Kingston , he's with the explosives unit. He didn't know what kind of shell it was either, he said he would see if he could find any info on it, but since I had the pics I figured I'd tap into the resources on CGN.
 
sweet sheep man. Would that be a black powder load or a smokeless? and weren't the german shells two stage? the put powder bags in between the shell and the casing.

Or maybe im thinking about German howitzer shells.

Didn't the french use a 75mm in ww1?
 
Hard to make out the numbers, but seems to be a French 37mm, 1885variant, made by Pinchard Denys Paris, 20th lot, Sept 1917.

I would suggest trying to pull the projectile out by hand. The 37mm was as dirt common in World War One as the day was long, and a huge number of these were taken and kept as souveniers. Usually the fuse and primer have been deactivated and the powder dumped. In those cases you can usually pop the round apart by hand. If you can't I suggest you treat it as a live round.
 
The French used Melinite, a derivative of picric acid.
Picric acid has the nasty habit of forming unstable picrate salts when in contact with a reactive metal. This makes deactivating WW1 live ammo a kind of Russian roulette. When in doubt, just treat it as live ammo and contact the proper services to check it.
Don't try to disassemble it: sometimes, even unscrewing the fuse can have very bad consequences if picrates have formed on the fuse's threads.
PP.
 
Ya, just from the picture, it also appears the fuze is active as well.

I know it's been roughly 100 years, but it's this type of ord that kills and maims in the fields of Europe even today.

So please be careful and seek appropriate advise/disposal.
 
i collect this kinda stuff. and from what i see and read, looks live. Klunk is right PDP...DO NOT DROP IT. Personsonally im not sure if its worth messing with. as Koldit says, seek profesional guideance.
 
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