Gorilla surplus has a load of them for $15 a pop in Vancouver. Most of the staff don't even know they have them, but they're in a large ammo box marked "grenades" in sharpy. They're blue handled blue practice ones.
Inert Grenade
- Thread starter Riflechair
- Start date
I'd take it appart and make VERY sure that the thing is inert if I was you .... Don't ask me how I know 
.
.Weird coincidence........a friend gave me an inert Mills last nite. I did someone a favour and they gifted the grenade to me through the buddy.....
- Location
- marmora ontario
I'll have one for sale at the Belleville show sunday. 25$$ JITC
Quote: "I'd take it apart and make VERY sure that the thing is inert if I was you .... Don't ask me how I know."
I used to work in the ammo and explosive R & D labs of CIL. We once had a project involving testing experimental delayed blasting caps. The delay trains would be from a fraction of a second to maybe as long as a second. The caps themselves were inert.
We had to hook the cap wires to a post, hit the fire button and read and note the actual delay. My partner was uncomfortable firing blasting caps on his desk top, so he rigged a piece of 2 x 10 in front of the cap, so he could duck his head each time he fired.
I thought he looked kinda funny, ducking his head each time as a cap went "Phfft". Until a real cap got into the mix and went "BANG!!"
Murphy struck again.
Every time I see an inert bomb, I think of an experience I had in about 1962. I was just starting in the armament section of a RCAF bases as an armament officer. This base used a lot of different thinks that went bang, including practice bombs, practice depth charges, real bombs and depth charges, homing torpedoes, rockets, radar and infra red anti-aircraft missiles, a nuclear missile, and Lee Enfield 303 and 22, Sten, Sterling and Bren.
I got to play with them all.
Anyway, almost the first day on the job, I got a severe safety lecture about the practice bomb. I was told it was the most dangerous device we used. The practice bomb was a cast iron nose piece, a light metal tail fin and a 10 ga super duty blank that slid down a channel to hit a fixed firing pin. Compared to the other hardware, it did not strike me as very dangerous.
The bombs were loaded onto a bomb rack, by reaching overhead, and then the safety pin was pulled out. If the bomb was not correctly mounted, it would fall to the ground. A seven foot fall was enough for the tail fin to do its job, and it would hit nose first and fire. It was the only device we had that could be set off accidently. The warning made sense to me and explained why it looked like the techs did a chin up on each bomb before letting go.
But then I was told that a single practice bomb had enough power to blow up a house. I laughed at that one, but was handed an article to read from a local newspaper. It explained how Joe local had found one of our practice bombs on the beach and taken it home to grace his mantel piece. After awhile he thought it a good idea to make sure it was safe, so he called the police. They called the military, which send a disposal expert over to take a look.
The "expert" correctly identified the practice bomb (which probably had an empty blank in it) and then looked up the approved disposal technique - blow in place. He taped a pair of half pound TNT blocks to it and blew it.
True story.
I used to work in the ammo and explosive R & D labs of CIL. We once had a project involving testing experimental delayed blasting caps. The delay trains would be from a fraction of a second to maybe as long as a second. The caps themselves were inert.
We had to hook the cap wires to a post, hit the fire button and read and note the actual delay. My partner was uncomfortable firing blasting caps on his desk top, so he rigged a piece of 2 x 10 in front of the cap, so he could duck his head each time he fired.
I thought he looked kinda funny, ducking his head each time as a cap went "Phfft". Until a real cap got into the mix and went "BANG!!"
Murphy struck again.
Every time I see an inert bomb, I think of an experience I had in about 1962. I was just starting in the armament section of a RCAF bases as an armament officer. This base used a lot of different thinks that went bang, including practice bombs, practice depth charges, real bombs and depth charges, homing torpedoes, rockets, radar and infra red anti-aircraft missiles, a nuclear missile, and Lee Enfield 303 and 22, Sten, Sterling and Bren.
I got to play with them all.
Anyway, almost the first day on the job, I got a severe safety lecture about the practice bomb. I was told it was the most dangerous device we used. The practice bomb was a cast iron nose piece, a light metal tail fin and a 10 ga super duty blank that slid down a channel to hit a fixed firing pin. Compared to the other hardware, it did not strike me as very dangerous.
The bombs were loaded onto a bomb rack, by reaching overhead, and then the safety pin was pulled out. If the bomb was not correctly mounted, it would fall to the ground. A seven foot fall was enough for the tail fin to do its job, and it would hit nose first and fire. It was the only device we had that could be set off accidently. The warning made sense to me and explained why it looked like the techs did a chin up on each bomb before letting go.
But then I was told that a single practice bomb had enough power to blow up a house. I laughed at that one, but was handed an article to read from a local newspaper. It explained how Joe local had found one of our practice bombs on the beach and taken it home to grace his mantel piece. After awhile he thought it a good idea to make sure it was safe, so he called the police. They called the military, which send a disposal expert over to take a look.
The "expert" correctly identified the practice bomb (which probably had an empty blank in it) and then looked up the approved disposal technique - blow in place. He taped a pair of half pound TNT blocks to it and blew it.
True story.
