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Blasting Cap Crimpers

bacarnal

Ordnance Approved/Premium
Ordnance approved
To go along with the Blasting Machine thread, here is my collection of cap crimpers. Mostly Schollhorns (which includes a drop forged variant and a stamped U.S.M.C. marked). Lower right are ones I was either issued or carried at one time or another in my career, though the Dupont No. 4's were my mainstay. Cheers, Bruce.

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I've still got the set I carried for my EOD career, and kept it handy in case, but actually, no one in my units actually expected--or trusted!--me to really HANDLE any explosives.....
 
Hallo,
I don't think that crimpers are a current issue item with the military. As far as I know, none of the big producers manufactures "normal blasting caps" any more, since quite a few years. In civilian blasting they are not used any more since decades. The only use that I know of, where they still may be used, is "Avalanche Blasting" in the high mountain regions. My foto shows from left to right:
1.) A civilian crimperr with a stamped in logo of a sixsided prism, inside which R S Co. with a circle above the S and a picture-logo. I have not found any info about this company up till now.
2.) This is a so called model "Pionier"(Engineer) crimper used by the West-German army starting in the 50s. It is still sometimes offered from civilian blasting supply companies for around a 100 $
3.) This is the old style crimper of the East-German army, also from around the 50s.
4.) This is the new-style East-German crimper, which was used up till the end of the East-German army.
The last 3 crimpers, also historic items, are new and have never been used. These are quite expensive precision tools. The East-German factory issued their crimpers with a piece of timefuse onto which 2 dummy caps were crimped, as wittnes to the full function of the crimper and to show the type of crimp.
There seem to be very few people into collecting crimpers. Before I had quite a few, but sold off the last ones lying around, just a short while ago, for very small $.
 

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Your second from the left looks like the ones the Norwegians used when I was at cold weather exercises in '85. They got theirs from the stockpiles left after WWII along with caps and 2kg TNT charges.
I still have four sets of the red handled East German ones I picked up from somewhere.
 
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Hallo @bacarnal,
I'm surprised that you think the Model "Pionier"crimper already existed in WW2. I went through my library. There are very few pictures of WW2-crimpers published, but all are similar to the US, British and civilian ones. There existed big, stationary crimp-gadgets, used in mines for large volume crimping, with multi-segment tooling. For all the info I could find, the Model "Pionier"-crimper is a post-war development. But, I am interested to learn more. Is there anybody here who has any experience or knowledge of german demolition equipment development ?
Regards,
Bellifortis.
Your second from the left looks like the ones the Norwegians used when I was at cold weather exercises in '85. They got theirs from the stockpiles left after WWII along with caps and 2kg TNT charges.
I still have four sets of the red handled East German ones I picked up from somewhere.
 
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