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1 pounder puzzler

mach1bang

Well-Known Member
I have this French 1 pounder that seems a bit odd.
It is type with bulge in projectile base.The drive band seems not to be finished properly,also it has a ring around the nose
which has not been machined off.The nose is solid and of rounded profile not pointed.
A hole drilled in the base through bulge reveals a cavity extending 6cm into the projectile.
So it has a solid forward end and a cavity to rear,extending about half way into proj.
My initial thoughts are that it's unfinished or a reject.but the base was finished with bulge,so no base fuze and the rounded nose
is unusual.Could it be a practice projectile,and the poor quality driveband is just a coincidence.
I await your thoughts on this one.
Thanks Tim.
 

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I know some of these got sloppy but this takes it to a whole new level :xd:. The nose has not been drilled and threaded, but does the inside hole thorough the base become wider inside? It may be that it is indeed hollow but the hole in the base made to centre it and allow spinning it on a lather to shape it went too far in and ruined the whole thing.
Is there a similar indent in the nose ? Perhaps if not it has been removed prior to the further work on the tip. It has certainly been machined on the outside
prior to the bands being fitted, though they have been left a bit rough. These were made with finished flat bases into 1915 when production picked up and
things were left rough to speed the production. One wonders how an offset lump like that would affect accuracy . So I would say an unfinished factory reject,
They made millions of them useless as they were, so this one went home rather than be recycled, there must have been lots of rejects, but one doesn't see them.
I doubt it ever saw a case, other than for display.
 
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I have a similar projectile, with the base lump.
I guess it was just to speed up production by removing a few finishing machining stages.
Possibly rounds down range trumped potential loss of accuracy?
 
Hi Gordon,
the hole in base was drilled by me to investigate and prove inert,the cavity is a proper whide cavity but cannot measure width due to
small entrance hole made.The nose is round and smooth with no sign of a lathe centering tool.
On close examination it looks like a faint DD stamp on the side of proj,and a crescent moon stamp,I don't think the crescent is
just a ding,it is uniform.
Were the nose rounded before drilling for fuze,but the whole front half of this is solid,so it would need a very long fuze pocket
to reach the cavity.
Tim.
 
Here is another opinion, in this case the nose is in fact a plug so it might unscrew !
The point about it having to be emptied of sand etc is the key, something I had not
thought of. So wartime projectile with a steel/iron nose plug ~


The shell is French of course and I think that the nose is closed by a plug
as they made the hollow inside with a mIxture of sand and some other products
and therefore if the shell body is empty, it would have been opened so
as to allow extracting the moulding sand !
Ax the driving bands are not finished, I think that it had been intended
to teach the process for loading safely the 37 mm 1916 gun ...
 
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Hi Gordon,
I initially thought it had a nose cap or plug of some kind,it does visually look like that.
If so it is a very tight precision fit,and gives little purchase to unscrew.could it be a push fit rather than threaded if a plug?
so are you saying it could be some type of drill round?
I will investigate the plug possibility again but I don't think it will come out.
Tim.
 
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