Re: What is the oldest 303 round you own?
Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 9:01 pm
It'd be a shame to fire those. What a great story!
I have one inert Mk V hollow point from the 1890's that I have recently collected that has a place in my cartridge collection. I also have about 15 Great War dated rounds which were made at the Birmingham Metal and munitions works in 1917 and the Government cartridge factory no 3 in Black pole in Worcestershire.
Back when I was starting out about 15 years ago surplus 303 mk VII ball was quite easy to find. A few of my local dealers used to have quite a lot of it, all mixed dates from the Great war all the way up to 1950s Radway Green which was the best quality stuff by far. The last lot I acquired was about 5 years ago from an RFD who was tasked with disposing of some ammunition from a club store included in the sale were a number of sealed metal crates of 303. When I opened the crate the ammo was in 32 round carboard boxes covered in cellophane and when opened the Ammo was dated no later than 1943. When shot I did notice the priming compound was past it's prime but every round went off.
With Blank rounds the main source in the UK for reenactors and the film industry for many years was ex army Q3 short blank which was cordite loaded and that packs quite an impressive bang. Most of that I found was 1950s dated but most had not been stored correctly and quite a few did not fire. A few years ago I did get a batch of 1980s dated 303 blank which was made by HXP. The rounds were packed in 40 round cardboard packets and marked as BLANK .303 IN L10A1 I think these were ex cadet forces blanks. All of those worked faultlessly.