I say bullet, I of course mean cartridge. Excuse my crappy camera; looks like this, about 7cm in length. I put a Stirling penny there too for shits and giggles. On the back around the edge it says going clockwise from 12, ‘06’ ‘RG’ at 4 o’clock and some tiny emblem at 8 o’clock that looks just like the Shimazu mon. What do these mean? Which rifle would take it?
I’m 100% sure this is a dummy round, but if it weren’t is there any way to get a cartridge to fire without a firearm (note that I do not want to try that)?
7.62x51mm ball cartridge. Made in 2006. The symbol is a NATO interchangeability symbol. (Can be fired from all NATO 7.62mm rifles/machine guns. Looks like a live round to me. Is there a primer in the base? RG is Royal Ordnance Ammunition Division, Radway Green, Crewe Cheshire, England
The two common US 7.62mm dummy rounds have either a black oxide finish, M172; or a fluted cartride case, M63, M63A1. And a newer one coming out has holes in the cartridge case and a nickel finish. None have a primer in the base of the cartridge. Not sure of the British convention of dummy rounds.
That’s what I was going to say also- that cross/circle thing is the NATO symbol, and based on the blurry picture, the bullet it looked more like 7.62 than 5.56 mm, which narrows it down almost certainly to the 7.62 NATO round.
I’m not 100% sure on this, but I think you can fire 7.62 NATO in .308 Winchester rifles without any problems.
My camera (sorry about the blur, best I could do) wouldn’t pick up the detail on the rear of the cartridge, but the back of it looks a lot like the top one of these, except with a darker edge and a small dimple about a millimetre wide and about 1/4 millimetre deep in the middle. It’s also more flat and not as rounded. Hmm, maybe not too much like that at all, but best I could find on Google images.
Made in England, that’s what I like to hear. So, would something like an M14 take it?
Not sure, but it’s pretty much a perfectly circular little indentation right in the centre. I honestly can’t remember where I got it from, although it has been converted into a keyring at some point (which is why I’m pretty sure it’s a dummy round) as there’s a small hole punched through the lip at the back, so I either picked it up at some museum gift shop or my uncle who was in the army gave it me as a pressie.
How careful do you have to be with a live round? Your bare hands couldn’t set it off, could they if you were fiddling with it? I’m assuming not or we’d have a lot of handless soldiers.
I’m aware of a high school kid who brought a live bullet into an art class and tried to solder it onto a necklace. It blew up in his face. Bullets just aren’t that dangerous outside of the barrel of a gun; they need that barrel to channel the expanding gas and propel them. I recall that the kid got a mild burn on a finger.
Thanks for the replies, they don’t teach us much of this stuff over the big pond they call the Atlantic Ocean.
Weirdly if I shake it up and down I can hear what sounds like tiny bits of gravel just in front of the rear of the cartridge, I’m guessing that powder would be packed much tighter in a live round?
I remember live 5.56 NATO rounds making more noise than 5.56 NATO blanks, likely because of the greater powder charge. A blank only needs to be able to cycle the weapon with the help of a BFA.
I don’t see why a dummy would have any powder in it.
In my experience, a blank cartridge will not have a bullet in it. The 5.56 NATO blanks I used had a scrunched up front.
Wikipedia conveniently displays the 5.56 and 7.62 NATO rounds next to a ruler:
Looks like a live 7.62 NATO.
“Bullets just aren’t that dangerous outside of the barrel of a gun”
This is one of those situations where it’s better to be safe than sorry. If about 3 grams of propellant go off which are being held by a bullet that weighs about 10 grams and a case that weighs about the same, something is going to be moving fast.
Gravel, like small balls of propellant, when you shake it? Sounds live.
Small hole through cartridge case rim seems like a dummy.
Indentation in primer would indicate a fired cartridge case (w/o bullet) or a misfire.
Is the patina of the bullet (copper alloy jacket) a match to the cartridge case? Any signs of the bullet being a different vintage - cross-hatch or groove marks from a plier?
Conflicting information. I’m getting old, still have all my fingers, toes, and eyesight (hearing - ehhh). I’d “carefully” pull it apart and dump out whatever is inside; then reinsert the bullet. Or have a gunsmith (they do have them across the pond still what with firearm restrictions?) check it out for you.
No sign of anyone jimmying the bullet into it, it’s in there pretty tight and there’s no marks on the bullet whatsover. Maybe it might have been a cartridge that misfired, but was kept to make into a keyring? Sounds like like something my uncle would have done. Dunno what weapon he’d have been using though if it misfired, the standard British Army SA-80 is a 5.56mm. Maybe a GPMG or L129A1 Sharpshooter? Which is more likely? My other idea that it came from a museum, well I can’t imagine them selling live ammo in 2006.
Britain and Canada adopted the Belgian FN FAL around the same time, 1957, followed by West German army as the G1. The Germans soon transitioned to a modified version of the Spanish CETME rifle, Heckler & Koch G3. Cribbed from Wiki as to when and what rifle was adopted for the “new” 7.62mm standard NATO round. If there are striations on the cartridge case, it was probably linked for a machine gun, otherwise a rifle round.
I can imagine a lot of things. A soldier after Desert Storm trying to take home a near 50 lb. complete 120mm tank sabot round as a souvenir in his duffle bag as one outstanding example. We didn’t have an ammunition amnesty box at the air departure point, we had a fair sized trash dumpster that got emptied daily.
That’s a pretty probable hypothesis. Look here for images of an unfired, a dimpled (misfired) and fired primer, which of the three resembles your cartridge’s primer the most?
I guess there’s no doubt now that what you’ve got is a 7.62NATO round. And since it’s brass, without typical characteristics like the fluted case sides and you can hear the powder inside when you shake it, it’s also pretty certain you’ve got a live round.
It may be an old service souvenir (according to Wikipedia, the UK used the L1A1, chambered in 7.62NATO until the mid-80s). It may also be a military round used in a civilian rifle chambered for .308Win. According to general consensus among Scandiavians who’ve been using 7.62NATO in civilian rifles, you may risk up to 10% misfire due to military primers being harder than civilian primers (unless you use an old Mauser, which was and still really is a military rifle ).
Unless you really know what you’re dealing with (and it sounds as if you don’t), don’t try anything dumb like disassembling it yourself, it can easily blow up in your face. Since military rounds often have some kind of glue between the bullet and the case, it may be difficult to remove the bullet without causing serious danger. Hand it over to qualified personnel, like the police.
ETA: OTOH, if you just keep it on the mantelpiece, it won’t cause any trouble or danger. Until some kid gets hold of it and tries something stupid, like disassembling it…
[ol]
[li]Someone took a spent cartridge[/li][li]Drilled a hole in the base…[/li][li]Hi Opal[/li][li]Pressed a new bullet into the neck.[/li][li]Profit![/li][/ol]
).
