[749th tank battalion]

hello all,

following a thread I was reading about the VFW rifles and blanks.... kkkriverrats mentioned the difference with the 5 and 6 star crimped blanks (one being a blank, one being a grenade launching blank)
What I am not too conversant on is the older M1909 with the straight neck and red disc filler.
I just picked these up from a guy selling off his household items to move to the beach.

I took pictures of the can and the contents and headstamps.
I want to make sure these are indeed good and safe to run in my blank adapted BAR
I'm only used to Atlantic wall blanks and IMI long necks, so i'm sorry if this sounds like a bit of a novice question.

stamps are EW 43 and DA 65

can printing







thanks for any info or insight.... I just want to make sure the DA 65 is indeed .30-06 and would the older 43's be safe to run at 70 years old

--Andrew

 

[frazer42]

I have shot lots of GI style card top blanks in F/A 1919's, 1917A1's, and B.A.R.'s. Depending on your BFA, the BAR will run pretty slow if at all. On a 1919 type gun you can run the headspace a bit loose, maybe a click or two to help rate of fire. I prefer these for belt guns, although a bit messy to clean. Also, these flat blanks tend to jam like a nerd in his moms basement playing Sugar Hill Gang when he thinks no one is watching. ( In a BAR). J

 

[kkkriverrats]

I would consider any ammo produced US or Canadian DAQ (l Dominion Arsenal Quebec) corrosive before 1956 . As Dortmunder Beer always says 'Life's too short to drink cheap beer" Life's too precious to shoot corrosive stuff. If this guy stored the ammo in the attic well......... who knows.

Personally I would consider this stuff to be sold to collectors of ammo.

And the LC 12 M1909 crimped stuff shoots well in BFA equipped Army issued/CMP provided M1's.

The M1's were very nice completely redone and after 100 rounds through each function as intended.

EW is Eau Claire (WI) which is pretty uncommon as we made so much .30 ammo that several plants were closed, never opened like the Kenosha (WI) plant or converted to other stuff.

Curious about the markings on the links?

It will take a little detective work, but I would like to know.

 

[glassmountains]

I have shot lots of GI style card top blanks in F/A 1919's, 1917A1's, and B.A.R.'s. Depending on your BFA, the BAR will run pretty slow if at all. On a 1919 type gun you can run the headspace a bit loose, maybe a click or two to help rate of fire. I prefer these for belt guns, although a bit messy to clean. Also, these flat blanks tend to jam like a nerd in his moms basement playing Sugar Hill Gang when he thinks no one is watching. ( In a BAR). J

Did you use the USGI blank adapted magazine? I used them with mine and a GI BFA and everything worked well. I also had a NESA 1918A2 that I had rebarreled in 8mm and used the Egyptian wood tipped blanks back in the day. They worked great.

 

[749th tank battalion]

would the DA 65 stamped ones fall into the collectors category, they are in much cleaner condition as well as 20 years younger than the Eau Claire 43's ?

I wanted to try to run them (DA65) through my OOW BAR with adjusting the blank adapter. I can forget about the EW's I guess.

The EW43's , there were 85 in the lot, and one DEN 43 mixed in the linked belt.

The DA 65's were stacked in the can loose between cardboard sheets.

Charlie, The steel links for the most part have a small "J" stamped on them, a few have a "W" and some are not marked that I can see....many have light surface rust as seen in the representative photo I took of a handful, focusing on the markings.

a handful of the links, with markings

the condition of the DA65's

 

[frazer42]

Alex, I could never get the GI mags to work so I made some Gueitte style rear spacer mags that helped. Crimp blanks I never had much issue with, worked well. Plus the bazillion rounds of Norwegian(Dutch maybe?) full length stuff worked perfectly in regular mags. J

 

[mt-ac]

Trivia

For trivia I've was told that the Eau Claire plant was mothballed, but maintained until sometime in the 90's. Badger munitions near Baraboo,WI is now a site with environmental problems. They had a small museum open until about a year ago. Aside from the museum the rest of the buildings were razed in the last few years. Someone's spouse got very irate when told that a bid for scrap had been placed on one of the two tanks on display.
One of the tanks, a helicopter, and a 1950's vintage jet are now on public display at the Sauk City Airport. To help locate this display think of Culver's, as their corporate HQ is about a mile away.

 

[Armorer]

would the DA 65 stamped ones fall into the collectors category, they are in much cleaner condition as well as 20 years younger than the Eau Claire 43's ?

I wanted to try to run them (DA65) through my OOW BAR with adjusting the blank adapter. I can forget about the EW's I guess.

The EW43's , there were 85 in the lot, and one DEN 43 mixed in the linked belt.

The DA 65's were stacked in the can loose between cardboard sheets.

Charlie, The steel links for the most part have a small "J" stamped on them, a few have a "W" and some are not marked that I can see....many have light surface rust as seen in the representative photo I took of a handful, focusing on the markings.

View attachment 13923 a handful of the links, with markings

View attachment 13924 the condition of the DA65's

The problem with head stamps on GI blanks is that for the most part they mean nothing. At one time it was the policy of the Army to recycle shell cases from ball ammo and reload them as blanks. I recently bought a .30 cal ammo box labeled .30 caliber blank with Lake City lot number (250 rounds) but the cartridges head stamps were from 1944 to 1967 and from every arsenal you could name. Some were even labeled "MATCH". I had not been aware that the military made national match blank ammo. of course It is possible that purpose made cases were also loaded as blanks. This would probably be the case if every round in a belt was the same head stamp.

 

[749th tank battalion]

Armorer,
Thanks. I do remember you commenting on the mixed headstamps in the other thread pertaining to the VFW rifles and damage from the M3 grenade launching rounds.

The stencil on the side of this M1 ammo can did say "250 linked blanks lot DAQ 65" of which there were 220 DA65's stacked loose in the can sandwiched in cardboard, perhaps from their original carton.
Laying on top of them were 85 linked EW43's.

This guy was an older reenactor and I think he just boxed up blanks in whatever cans he could to sell.

Going with Frazer42's advice, I'm going to sell off the red paper disk DA65 lot to a friend who has an M1 Garand, as I think the flat tips won't feed well in the BAR and mag (my blanks are all crimped and come to a point). The EW43's in links i'll just sell off as "collectible"
I don't like the mess over mixed headstamps and what blanks are hot or weak...so I'll keep the stack of IMI long necks i bought from this guy as I know what origin and strength they have.

 

[gulf state gaurd]

If you find someone who seriously collects them I have quite an assortment of makers and ww2 dates some korea that I culled from my pile. We never looked at dates when we I was doing it. Blanks were blanks. A hoarder noticed some of my spent casings at a living history for Scouts and tried scolding me because "they were a $1 a round". Funny he shut up when I said how many you want to buy, then magically they werent worth a buck a round, in fact he wouldnt give me anything for them but did scrounge my empties.

 

[749th tank battalion]

Yeah that's always a kicker when they never put their money where their mouth is. I have heard similar types of comments at living history events here regarding either a weapon or equipment or ammo.
I have an event in 3 weeks outside Philadelphia, so i'll see what response I get to the rounds i present in person. If i get any kind of interest in the 43 dated ones i'll let you know GSG. There is a collector out there for everything.

 

[gulf state gaurd]

Is it Ft Mifflin or another event in 3 weeks?

 

[749th tank battalion]

GSG

This event is 2 weeks from this weekend, i have to check if it's a one day only thing (either Sat or Sun). It's the commemoration of the battle of Paoli (Chester Cty. PA)
It is a timeline event starting at French-Indian up to Vietnam / Gulf war if anybody shows with an impression for the more modern ones.

I know of a Ft. Mifflin event much later in the Fall. My old Civil war group used Mifflin on occasion as a place to drill and knock the rust off for the spring / summer campaign, but i never was there for a WWII event as of yet.