The Militaria Thread: Collecting and Identification

Oh my. Well now I'm super-duper jealous maccapacca! :)

Mine has the chamber welded closed and the head of the bolt sawn off at 45 degrees so it can't extract the cartridge even if you could get one in. :( The bolt action still works at least, and I can charge the magazine with a clip of inert rounds, and it dry fires.
 
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I was over in the US a few months ago and one of my colleagues there was into his firearms.

Had an impressive enough collection at home with some old WW2 rifles as well as a lot of modern stuff too. Also had a fair few pistols including a Luger with the big holster and shoulder stock.

Took me shooting one lunch hour, just some pistols no rifles sadly, and the gun shop had a stack of about 50 moisans just on the floor. Apparently they get them in bulk dirt cheap and flog them off, $100 a piece. Chap I was with was saying they aren't bad for the money and can be decent hunting rifles, he went through them all as he's looking for a specific type (octagonal barrel).

Said he'll get 2 when he finds some, one to shoot one to keep 'nice'. Also showed me some clips of his dads .50cal machine gun being fired which looked pretty cool :)

Pistols were still fun enough to shoot seeing as you can legally really get the chance to fire them over here.
 
he went through them all as he's looking for a specific type (octagonal barrel).

Very nice! The octagonal (hex) barrel shank/receiver is a rarer, earlier feature of the 91/30 Mosins.

Some inert bullets for you all. Points for anyone who can identify them. :)

GQ1oVLQl.jpg


Slightly larger snap:
GQ1oVLQ.jpg
 
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Random guessing, from left to right -
50bmg, 30/06, 7.62x54r, 7.62x39, .30(edit), .357, .45acp or 9mm, .38(edit)

Can't say for the smaller rounds.. The 7.62's with probably be for a mosin and an sks/ak respectively?
I guess the rimmed cartridge could also be a .303?

Pic of what's stamped on the bases might give more of a clue.

dunno lol :p
 
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Random guessing, from left to right -
50bmg, 30/06, 7.62x54r, 7.62x39, .30(edit), .357, .45acp or 9mm, .38(edit)

Can't say for the smaller rounds.. The 7.62's with probably be for a mosin and an sks/ak respectively?
I guess the rimmed cartridge could also be a .303?

Pic of what's stamped on the bases might give more of a clue.

dunno lol :p

Half correct ;)
 
.303 bren gun was an 'accurate' weapon. Accuracy is something you want in an infantry rifle where precision fire is the order of the day.

Machine guns tend to be area / suppression weapons, aimed at killing infantry groups. For this you need an area effect weapon where you point it at a group of men and pull the trigger, letting the weapons 'inaccuracy' (the term is relative) do the work of putting hundreds of rounds per minute in a cone of dispersal where you pretty much kill whatever is in the area of fire without having to pinpoint each individual.

The Bren lmg was accurate enough for shooting at a single soldier at range, but it was not until the barrels had worn some that they became more favored by infantry for dealing area fire better due to slight inaccuracy caused by the worn barrel riffling making the groups of fire open up over a larger area.

That's roughly how it was explained to me anyway.
 
wow there's some great items you guys have got. I had an old sword from my dad's brother that was in the Royal marines, but unfortunately it was stolen when we were broken into :(
 
one of my flat mates display cabinets, i think this is part of his Russian collection

(all deactivated/legal to own etc..)
6pruaw.jpg
 
Can you explain that for me please? Do you mean, they were over engineered and to keep costs down they had to make them simpler? I have heard of that before.

Because I can't see how being 'too accurate' is a problem when you are talking about a machine gun.

if you spray 100 bullets and they cover a 10ft wide cone at impact you're gonna nail a big group of people and make sure everyone keeps their head down from all the rounds pinging of everything every side of them

you spray a 100 bullets and they all hit in the same 3 inch grouping you're only taking out one guy and no one else is pinned down.
 
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