British army dump - Totally awesome finds

[Steve T]

A great day digging at the British army dump permission today, with 12 people in attendance from the WW2 RRPG.

Things were going along quite normally for the first hour or two, when Karen uncovered some very strange brass divider strips and starter tabs. They looked like Vickers cloth belt strips and tabs, but were chunkier and bigger. It wasn't until David found one in immaculate condition that, after a quick bit of a spit and a rub, revealed the starter tabs to be Vickers .50cal tabs, dated 1941!!!!! We soon realised that the 'seam' of these was really quite substantial and we recovered a HUGE quantity of them. Not only that, but after we had all dived into Karen's hole to dig the seam out, (after suggesting the 'men' should dig the rest out), we discovered a huge stash of brass Long-Lee butt plates beneath the cloth belt bits.

Added to that the crazy awesome weapon parts that were coming out.........Lewis spade grips, Lewis trigger grips, P14 grenade discharger cup adapter, Lee-Enfield bits galore and loads of Flintlock 'locks' The list of awesome finds goes on. I will post pictures of cleaned stuff once I've attacked it, but here is what I took home with me, as well as a close up of one of the cleaned tabs.

50cal vickers cloth belt starter tabs.....rarely than rocking horse poop!

 

 

 

[HetzersGonnaHetz]

Was an awesome one yesterday!

Edited June 27, 2016 by HetzersGonnaHetz

[Steve T]

The cleaning of finds from Sunday's dig is well underway. I've decided to take half the Vickers 50cal starter tabs and strips back to shiny brass, half with the patina intact. I have also discovered I had one very unusual Vickers 303 cloth belt starter tab. Not seen one like this before. The Bren oil bottles have come up nicely, as have the Lee-Enfield butt discs. The three badly damaged oil bottles are all American made 'Noera' bottles. Not tracked the weapon they are from down yet. The butt plates are all from the Long Lee, and all are marked. Usually they are marked with the unit information, but one is very curiously named!! All the 50cal Vickers belt starter tabs are marked exactly the same, so all dated September 1941

 

So far I've cleaned maybe 10% of what I recovered on Sunday, so back to it!! So much to clean, so little time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[HetzersGonnaHetz]

Steve, you know the SMLE ID discs, are they the serial number or Regiment marked?

[Guest Fred Karno's Army]

I did read once that marksman or sharpshooters before the term snipers came about for our lot were actually allowed to mark their personal weapons with names against all the Kings regulations .Sure it was the Long,long trail or similar publication.

Some good finds thier mate.

[Steve T]

More stuff cleaned........ Nine more Long Lee rifle butt plates along with 5 from the Lee-Enfield. A couple of fittings from the M1917 Browning MG, (fits the condenser pipe to the jacket), a brass trigger guard and then a couple of handfuls of the brass strips from the Vickers 50cal cloth belt. The batcn at the bottom have had an extra step of cleaning (citric acid then rock tumbler), whereas the bigger batch on the top have just been tumblered. I have put two strips in from the normal Vickers 303 belt so you can gauge the size.