Flying Beaver
Regular
- Location
- Alberta Free State
Anyone who's bought a CZ-858, SKS, Moisin-Nagant, etc. has probably received with it an oil bottle. Standard item of military issue equipment, right?
I was cleaning the Cosmoline off of one metal bottle I've had kicking around for a while, and found myself wondering about the labeling. It's a twin-spout bottle; one side labeled "W" and the other side "H".
The sensible answer to the question was that one side was for solvent, and the other side for oil. But which was which?
Little did I know that there are whole web sites devoted just to identifying all the different variations of oil bottles issued as equipment with rifles!
First of all, my own bottle, like literally millions of others (sorry for the cell-phone pic):
I am indebted to Richdard Barnes for his transliteration of the Cyrillic characters and solving the mystery:
"..., the later double spout ‘round’ AKM version with its pouch [and] the letters ‘W H’ . . . The ‘W’ is in fact the Cyrillic ‘ShCh’ & the word transliterates to ‘Shchelo’ which means lye or alkaline solution / Solvent. The ‘H’ is the Cyrillic ‘N’ and transliterates to ‘Neft’ or Oil."
[If the bit about the alkaline solution is true, it would go along with cleaning rifles that have been shooting corrosive ammo].
[Found at ht tp://tinyurl.com/6dbjd8y
[Opens an MS Word document in new window]
Curiosity got the better of me, and I looked through a few more Google references until I came on what must be the mother lode of pictures of east-bloc oil bottles - hundreds of different ones, all identified by country and many by weapon type. For those with a thirst for pics of oil bottles, see:
http://browningmgs.com/OilBottles/OB.htm
So there you have it: every bit of trivia you never wanted to know about your VZ/SKS/AK/Moisin issue oil container.
See what happens when you're home sick and have too much time on your hands?
P.S. Also on the same web site is an exhaustive comparison of all variants of the AK-47 produced by the USSR (and maybe others - I didn't get that far. (More fodder for you trivia buffs) http://browningmgs.com/T2T3/Kalashnikov.htm
I was cleaning the Cosmoline off of one metal bottle I've had kicking around for a while, and found myself wondering about the labeling. It's a twin-spout bottle; one side labeled "W" and the other side "H".
The sensible answer to the question was that one side was for solvent, and the other side for oil. But which was which?
Little did I know that there are whole web sites devoted just to identifying all the different variations of oil bottles issued as equipment with rifles!
First of all, my own bottle, like literally millions of others (sorry for the cell-phone pic):
I am indebted to Richdard Barnes for his transliteration of the Cyrillic characters and solving the mystery:
"..., the later double spout ‘round’ AKM version with its pouch [and] the letters ‘W H’ . . . The ‘W’ is in fact the Cyrillic ‘ShCh’ & the word transliterates to ‘Shchelo’ which means lye or alkaline solution / Solvent. The ‘H’ is the Cyrillic ‘N’ and transliterates to ‘Neft’ or Oil."
[If the bit about the alkaline solution is true, it would go along with cleaning rifles that have been shooting corrosive ammo].
[Found at ht tp://tinyurl.com/6dbjd8y
[Opens an MS Word document in new window]
Curiosity got the better of me, and I looked through a few more Google references until I came on what must be the mother lode of pictures of east-bloc oil bottles - hundreds of different ones, all identified by country and many by weapon type. For those with a thirst for pics of oil bottles, see:
http://browningmgs.com/OilBottles/OB.htm
So there you have it: every bit of trivia you never wanted to know about your VZ/SKS/AK/Moisin issue oil container.
See what happens when you're home sick and have too much time on your hands?
P.S. Also on the same web site is an exhaustive comparison of all variants of the AK-47 produced by the USSR (and maybe others - I didn't get that far. (More fodder for you trivia buffs) http://browningmgs.com/T2T3/Kalashnikov.htm
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