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Caught in time

Lou

Lou

Well-Known Member
With the help of another member,who supplied the bits,I was able to bring back to life this fine US MK2 pineapple grenade.Lots of drilling,superglue.
Probably the most inert item ever posted on BOCN:tongue:,except for the stuff that turned out not to be ordnance related,lol.
 

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LOL! That is inert indeed :tinysmile_twink_t2:

Love how it looks.
 
Great lou.
I'd like to do something like that with a shrapnell shell.
 
Hi Lou,
Thats a nice idea, looks really good as well. Thanks for showing it, best regards Weasel.
 
Thanks guys. I appreciate your comments and it means alot to me comming from such top notch colletors as yourselves. A special thanks also goes out to Dirt Detective.
 
Wow Lou,
That looks fantastic..Nice to see some of these old parts used as a display. :tinysmile_grin_t: Nice job.. Just curious..how long did it take to drill through that bottom piece?
 
Gspragge said:
They don't break up all that well do they ~
Click to expand...

They typically broke up into 1, 2 and 3 piece segments, neck would be in 3 or 4 parts..bottom always stayed in one piece along with the fuze. Hard to say how many 2 or 3 part fragments in each grenade body. Every once in a while with a low detonation they would break in half as shown in the pic below.
 

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Lou said:
With the help of another member,who supplied the bits,I was able to bring back to life this fine US MK2 pineapple grenade.Lots of drilling,superglue.
Probably the most inert item ever posted on BOCN:tongue:,except for the stuff that turned out not to be ordnance related,lol.
Click to expand...
Hey Lou, How about painting the segments only with black light paint, shut out the lights and fish the old black light from your old paraphanaila box and watch the explosion. The help of some good old Columbian red may enhance the effect. Aah the 70's. I miss 'em...Dano
 
Lou said:
With the help of another member,who supplied the bits,I was able to bring back to life this fine US MK2 pineapple grenade.Lots of drilling,superglue.
Probably the most inert item ever posted on BOCN:tongue:,except for the stuff that turned out not to be ordnance related,lol.
Click to expand...

Good effort Lou, like it a lot!
Thanks for showing it.
Dave.
 
Dirt Detective said:
Wow Lou,
That looks fantastic..Nice to see some of these old parts used as a display. :tinysmile_grin_t: Nice job.. Just curious..how long did it take to drill through that bottom piece?
Click to expand...
The bottom wasnt so bad to drill through.With the correct bit,and drill press and oil it went quite smoothly.The problem was the 1/16 inch holes drilled in the shrapnel and center ball for the wires.Even with the drill press and oil I burned up and broke a number of the tiny bits.
 
Dirt Detective,

Sir, I am gonna have to disagree with you on how these WWII grenades that where made with Sintered Iron would fragment. The pictures you have shown are what I believe to be "Low Order" explosions. When WWII grenades from all sides used Sintered Iron as their bodies, they found out that it did not work out as planned. You would have produced fragmentation pattern in Sintered Iron which are pieces of Iron no larger than the fuze itself with that being said it would also include pieces from the neck and pieces fro the bottom. The rest of the Sintered Iron would be between 60-75% dust. In otherwords Iron makes a very poor fragmentation device for killing the bad guys. The rest would just be fragmentation which would be enough to kill or maim the others nearby. Tests showed that the fuze itself could go out to 250 yards.

When we were in the late 1953 we had the M26 "Fragmentation" grenade which was a true way in the Korean War to produce more square, 1/8" fragments cut into the steel band. For the time period, it was better than the Iron grenades of the times. It used COMP B instead of the flaked TNT.

Now, we used the Mk2.A2 with a different, more modern fuze system in Vietnam along with the M26A1 grenades. Then they started to produce "baseball" types of grenades during Vietnam. These M33 & M67 "Baseball" grenades which inside of the grenade where notched on the inside of the grenade body by some sort of machine that also produced little dimples on the inside of the grenade. This also isn't making the best fragmentation pattern either. The over pressure creatd by the M67 is enough to kill everybody in a small room or foxhole alone with the fragmentation pattern not being very precise. More Comp B was used in the M-33 & M-67 whereas the Mk.2A1's were filled with flaked TNT.

Todays grenades are excellent examples of another forward step into the right direction for hand grenades. They use a plastic matrix with 2-4mm size balls wrapped up in either the plastic body itself or embedded in a secondary matrix, both of which have a very low melting melting point. Just about everybody is using these including the USSR. The advantage to this way is that the filler is much stronger and melts the plastic and heating the mini-balls during the explosions, and throwing hot melted plastic everywhere. Even China and Iraq have there own plastic grenades as does the Czechs (URG-86) and the Yugoslavians (M-75).

By the way I heard a rumor that the U.S. Marine Corp may go back to Rifle Grenades under certain circumstances. Just a rumor for now.


V40
 
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Cool information V40,thank you. Its always good to gather info and process it so we can all learn new things.Thats what alot of us are here for,to learn and grow.
 
Hi V40,
I think you took my post the wrong way..The photo I have posted above was to show the low order explosion and the resulting body breaking in half...not real common. I wasn't saying this is how they break up. Here is the pic again. This is what happens with a low order detonation.
 

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I would assume this is what the typical WWII Grenade did when it exploded, I cant say how much of it turned into dust but I wouldn't think a lot. Would be cool to be able to test one.
In the pic below, I just weighted some parts to match the weight of a body.
Truck body in photo was used for grenade practice in WWII and that is some heavy guage steel.
 

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Sintered Iron

Isn't that the process of compressing with heat iron powder into solid mass, that remains solid but is also soft, such that it works for rotating bands.

But grenades are cast solid iron which is hard and brittle.
 
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