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On 10/15/2019 at 3:00 PM, patriot said:

A pic would help to identify it.....

 

On 10/15/2019 at 3:00 PM, patriot said:

A pic would help to identify it.....

I tried but was restricted due to size of image.

NES 1943 20mm.

Was found in closet of new home.

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There is no way to SAFELY de-mill heavily corroded ordinance. The chemical primer and propellant may become very unstable, and if HE or incendiary may be even MORE unstable.

An ex girlfriend from high school's father had a nest of Civil War cannon balls on his hearth. She later dated a UDT Sailor who took one look and called the bomb squad - the cannon balls were filled with LIVE  black powder. A spark from the fireplace could have blown the entire house up!

Leave it to someone who Knows what they are working on, and have training on safely de-milling!

I stand by my first comment.

 

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Well it went off well, literally.

Placed it in a 4ft. hole, inside of a canister type air filter soaked in diesel.

Lit it up and waited, and waited. Probably took ten minutes to heat up enough but finally went Boom. Blew the brass clean out the hole. The brass shows stress fractures from not being in a chamber but otherwise looks good with what looks like an  unfired primer.

I took a .50 brass cartridge and it slid into the 20mm neck. Cool.

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9 hours ago, ChileRelleno said:

Wow, I read this hoping it trolling satire, meant to break the boredom.

Please tell me I'm correct.

No troll, 

I had first thought to try to shoot the primer with a pellet gun but didn't want to risk missing the primer and denting the rim. As a kid, I used to put 12ga rounds into a clay bank and shoot them from across the road. Often I would miss dead center just enough to knock them out of the bank without them going off.

But back to the topic, I had few choices to make the 20mm safe. With no access to a eod team, I could either bury it or light it off somehow. Burying did not sound good because someone could always dig it up in the future and it would be even more corroded and dangerous. So setting it off was the only was to make it inert.

By digging a 4ft hole and placing it in laying horizontal and cooking it off, what remained of the bullet would go in the dirt. Everything went as planned, safely. Now I have another empty shell for a key ring. 

Some of these replies sound like hens cacklin.

Jeez..

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Some have said soaking in wd40 will make powder and primer inert but I think they would have to have open exposure to the oil.

This 1943 shell proved its quality of build by withstanding years of salt water submersion, so much that the bullet rusted off at the end of brass, and still fired. So I doubt wd would do crap.

I don't know who 'NES' is, or was, but if it were built with a non corrosive round like du, it could have been fired today. Though, due to brass showing weakness with visable cracks, it might stick in the chamber of say a layti.

This bullet was most likely from a ww2 ship anti aircraft gun or Corsair cannon.

Edited by tatonic
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