I've never made a model in my life so this is a first for me.
The difficulty for me was that I don't have access to a lathe, so everything you see here was done by hand, with an electric sander or cut with a Dremel.
Why would anyone bother making this I hear some of you say?? Well, I'm one of those people who doesn't bother with TV, social media, electronic games and all the other good stuff but I do like fiddling around in the workshop
The start was to buy a piece of 25mm brass pipe off ebay. That set the size for the rest of the project, the diameter of the body on a real number 1 being about 40mm, so all measurements were 25/40th of the real thing.
The handle was made from the top part of an old snooker cue and an old curtain pole for the wide part that fits inside the brass body of the grenade. The tape is 1 inch herringbone dressmakers tape off ebay (ones on full size number 1 grenades are 1.5 inch wide tape).
The frag ring is.......a relic locking ring off a Tiger Tank track pin, with some filler to make it wider. Frag ring grooves could then be cut.
The cap was a problem. I needed a tube that would fit over the 25mm outer diameter of the body. A brass 1 inch flare pistol case did the job, cut down, sanded to remove the rim and shaped. I'm not good enough at making things to model the correct cap for a No 1 Mk 1 long handled grenade so I cheated a bit and made one like the simpler cap of the No 1 Mk 3. The cut outs were done with a Dremel.
The pin was the hardest part. Drilling a piece of 3mm bar (the spike in the cap) with a Dremel (I don't have a pillar drill) to fit a 2mm piece of brass wire through it (the pin) was tricky.
The top of the grenade body is a brass washer with some tiny screws that screw into the wood of the body. The detonator is the aluminium plug that a masonry nail fits into (found in the DIY section of the shed!!).
The belt hook is 2mm brass wire, glued to the body.
The 2 guides for the cap when in the fire position (the little red bits forward of the frag ring) are made from metal curtain rings and glued on.
Here's a comparison to a real one.
I couldn't do the stamping for the cap. When I work out how to do that I'll complete it but it'll do for now.
Dave.
The difficulty for me was that I don't have access to a lathe, so everything you see here was done by hand, with an electric sander or cut with a Dremel.
Why would anyone bother making this I hear some of you say?? Well, I'm one of those people who doesn't bother with TV, social media, electronic games and all the other good stuff but I do like fiddling around in the workshop
The start was to buy a piece of 25mm brass pipe off ebay. That set the size for the rest of the project, the diameter of the body on a real number 1 being about 40mm, so all measurements were 25/40th of the real thing.
The handle was made from the top part of an old snooker cue and an old curtain pole for the wide part that fits inside the brass body of the grenade. The tape is 1 inch herringbone dressmakers tape off ebay (ones on full size number 1 grenades are 1.5 inch wide tape).
The frag ring is.......a relic locking ring off a Tiger Tank track pin, with some filler to make it wider. Frag ring grooves could then be cut.
The cap was a problem. I needed a tube that would fit over the 25mm outer diameter of the body. A brass 1 inch flare pistol case did the job, cut down, sanded to remove the rim and shaped. I'm not good enough at making things to model the correct cap for a No 1 Mk 1 long handled grenade so I cheated a bit and made one like the simpler cap of the No 1 Mk 3. The cut outs were done with a Dremel.
The pin was the hardest part. Drilling a piece of 3mm bar (the spike in the cap) with a Dremel (I don't have a pillar drill) to fit a 2mm piece of brass wire through it (the pin) was tricky.
The top of the grenade body is a brass washer with some tiny screws that screw into the wood of the body. The detonator is the aluminium plug that a masonry nail fits into (found in the DIY section of the shed!!).
The belt hook is 2mm brass wire, glued to the body.
The 2 guides for the cap when in the fire position (the little red bits forward of the frag ring) are made from metal curtain rings and glued on.
Here's a comparison to a real one.
I couldn't do the stamping for the cap. When I work out how to do that I'll complete it but it'll do for now.
Dave.
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