Is digging up and collecting WW1 shells dangerous?

reminds me of two scrap-men and a cop who decided that the best course of action for a gigantic bomb they found is to take a blowtorch at it

also, that time where a dude blew himself up trying to make a plumb-bob out of a mortar round

Top kek

Its perfectly safe.
Ive yet to meet a friend killed by one.

Moar stories plz

Aren't you supposed to cook them in hot coals or with a blow torch first?

Did your uncle beat the shit out of the retard?

just a little news clip
youtube.com/watch?v=UVfrzXMLfS8

My other uncle used to be an officer in the LWP (polish communist army).
One night he got drunk with other officers, took a kbks (bolt action .22 training rifle), and they ware scaring the living shit out of conscript soldiers doing guard duty in watch towers by knocking out the lights.
He was a political commisar (called "cultural officer") on good terms with high brass, so I guess he could get away with a lot.

Nah, it was just a poor fuck who was born with his twin brother, the amateur midwife didnt notice its a double pregnancy, so they left him in the belly untill they noticed there's another kid comming. Sad how a silly thing can fuck up one for life.

Oh hey I've been to the Philippines, that totally seems like something that would happen there

Didn't the Vietnamese reuse unexploded bombs to make mines and shit? How do you go about opening a live shell without blowing yourself up in the process?

I dug up some yesterday near Ieper (Or Ypres as frogs and eternal anglos call it).

AMA.

What do you do with it once you dug it it up? Aren't you worried it might go off?

I call the police and let them take care of it DUH.

What did you expect? That I would use it as a doorstop?

I look for what we call "obussen" aka shrapnel shells that have gone off and are empty on the inside. I then clean them, remove rust with electrolysis and protect them with a wax coating. Then I place a fuze on top (again, one that I found and already went off) and voilá, a complete obus.

It's nice.

How rare is ti to find shells in good condition out of the ground? Are they rounds that didn't go off or just dropped in the mud?
youtube.com/watch?v=fOMmU4ShgQI

>shrapnel shells that have gone off and are empty on the inside
Don't shells come apart when they go off?

autism

In Ieper there is one unexploded shell every 10 meters or so. Not kidding. Not exaggerating.

Shit's metal as fuck.

no, see pic

Attached: Shrapnel_shell.gif (285x214, 1.08M)

to answer your second question, they are rounds that didn't go off.

about 1/3 rounds of ww1 were duds.

>I then clean them, remove rust with electrolysis and protect them with a wax coating
What's the process? Is it like a couple of days of electrolysis and boiling them in paraffin wax for a couple hours or is there more to it?

the ones they used had removable fuses (unscrew the tips) mines also. but today any found need to be left and blown in place.

for a british 6-pounder 3 hours of electrolysis at 12V and 3A is sufficient.

And for the waxing, just 20 minutes or so in 130°C paraffin does the job.

Does different type of soils make a difference? Aluminum and brass seems to preserve better than iron or steel, is that always the case?

I am a Szczelec
Our Major who used to be an officer in the LWP too
he told us that when he worked as a saper one time a local farmer went up to the JW and told them that he found a full on fucking crate of german nades from WW2
Seeing no point in driving to the poligon to detonate them, they just took it a bit farther and detonated it with the farmer's consent
He said that the thing felt like a goddamn nuke
The crater left by that was fucking huge
There was a piece of metal they left nearby
It literally flew a few inches from his goddamn head
he was hiding behind a tree

How much would you put in a metal detector to get started? Any specific model or specs to look for?

I would give my left nut to watch those idiots dig up an un-exploded nerve gas shell. Just to watch them die like this goat.

Attached: HeartfeltShyAfricanaugurbuzzard.webm (640x368, 589K)

>Does different type of soils make a difference?
well yeah, but in Ieper it's always the same clay soil. Preserves copper amazingly, I have found clips, shells, coins you name it that once cleaned looked as new. Since the soil is very wet the iron usually isn't too corroded (no space for air). Aluminum is also fine in that soil.

If you go look in the forests on the other hand like in the Ardennes (battle of the bulge), then eveything is utter shit. The plants and trees turn the soil very acidic and everything spare for gold silver and stainless steel oxidizes.

I can immediately tell if something was found in a field, wood or on the beach.

If you aren't entirely sure of the hobby yet, buy something second hand. there is a shitton of old people who buy an expensive metal detector only to use it once because they realize digging holes in the ground all day hurts they old backs.

I would start with ~300€, you should go for a Garret Ace (300i or 400i).

That's how I started. One year and a room full of relics later I upgraded to a XP Deus. Hell of a detector, but not cheap coming it at 1900€ for my model.

Was there nerve gas in ww1?

No, he's talking out his ass. There was no recorded use in the second world war either. So unless you're digging for shells in Angola, Iran, Iraq, or Syria, I doubt you're gonna find any nerve agent shells. And even then save for Syria the agent would have decomposed by then

>is fucking with 100 year old UXO dangerous?
hmm

Incidentitly, there was an user on here who had been medically treated for mustard gas after digging some up in Iraq.

Attached: 7B8342C9-2999-458A-8654-BB72982563B9.jpg (1024x297, 68K)

I was in that thread. Odd part is that it says poisoned by mustard gas but then in parenthesis it says poisoned by chlorine gas

Wellnis chlorine the active agent in mustard gas?
I believe him because by 2009 there were briefs regarding the risk of encountering chemical shells in northern Iraq.

But the media told me that there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq.

Saddam stockpiled them and used them both against ethnic minorities and the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war. He never used them against the US, and the reasons I hear range from everything to fear of the reprisals to he got rid of the evidence.

Just two weeks ago, an elementary schooler and two of his friends died when an UXO they played with exploded. It was a grenade from the 1940s, which he took home in a milk can. His mother found out, took it, and hid it in a dug hole behind the house for safekeeping in the meantime. Unfortunately, the kid, being a kid, dug the grenade out again the next day and called his friends to come over. They bashed the grenade with a rock repeatedly, and it exploded. The founder kid died instantly, his friends hours after in the hospital.

That fact was fun.
Thank you,user!

>Finds grenade
>Hits with rock
>Dies
Neat

Not even close.
It's a fake form based on a shit meme.

Hella, but it's metal af.

If they still aired Looney Toons that wouldn't have happened

not as long as you keep them on the countertop.

Why do burgers dump shells in their rivers?
youtube.com/watch?v=mKMqjrQSxi0

Everywhere there is/was a bridge, you find old artillery shells
youtube.com/watch?v=75YMWVGNSfg

I live in Norway, and my house is literally built in one of the battlefield where Norwegians, English, Germans, Austrians, Poles and French fought in 1940 on the sea, the ground and in the air. During the occupation period there were also Allied airstrikes. Almost all traces of this are completely gone now. It would be fantastic for me to find a verifiably ww2 item in nature here now.

So, when I was digging in my garden to get rid of some old bushes I had mixed feelings when my shovel went clank. Metal tube, covered with dirt, at least a foot long. Celebrate or call the police?

Neither. I identified it as a bit of pipe for a garden clothesrack after a minute. I guess I didn't get the chance to blow up the neighborhood this time.

it'd be cool to find some rifle or bayonet desu.

A few decades ago a drop container meant for the resistance was found in a remote location. Wind had carried the cute far away from the intended landing place. Around it lay a heap of rusted and broken Stenguns. One of the local museums have a few of them on display, lying as they were found sticking out of the ground and entwined into bushes. I have no pic unfortunately. It pains me that we have several local military museums with WW2 stuff, run by veterans who are now so old and few that the musems are open to the population just a day or two per year.

Does Jow Forums want me to show them my ww1 finds from sunday? Or shouldn't I bother?

Would love to see.

Wtf is happening to the goat?
Entangled? How in the fuck?

He means actual 'shrapnel' shells.

Yuros must die fucking COMMIE

This is what you find when searching on a random spot a couple kilometers away from Ieper in about 3 hours when looking ONLY for large copper signals (there are about 6 tones each swing, way too much to dig)

Attached: 2019-02-26 18.34.17.jpg (2656x1494, 1.47M)

Also found a piece with the shrapnel still attached.
Usually I throw iron pieces like this in a pile at the side of the field for the farmer to collect, but I like how the balls were still attached with the resin

Attached: 2019-02-26 18.47.32.jpg (2656x1494, 1.22M)

Some (unused) firing triggers

Attached: 2019-02-26 18.47.23.jpg (2656x1494, 1.3M)

and of course a bag-o-shrapnel

Attached: 2019-02-26 18.47.28.jpg (2656x1494, 1004K)

and now we wait

Attached: 2019-02-26 18.57.30.jpg (2656x1494, 1.09M)

Great stuff! Do you know what the triggers are for?

What are you using as iron source for you electrolyte bar? I used rebar and it worked, but end result was not great. But I probably let the pot stew for way too long.

artillery, they are called T-shaped friction igniters.

Here's a cut-through.

Attached: post-53132-0-47436800-1355507045[1].jpg (600x450, 51K)

>What are you using as iron source for you electrolyte bar?

If you mean the sacrificial anode, I use graphite plates.

That way the water stays (relatively) clear, and they can be used indefinitely without losing performance.

I need to remember this. My bath had a consistency and color approaching dirty gravy by the time I halted.

how does the process work? why doesp utting electricity do that stuff?
t. brainlet

basics of redox reactions. rust is iron giving away electrons to oxygen.

if you charge a rusty object negatively, the oxygen will just get the electrons from the current and thus release the iron atoms. So doing, the rust just flakes off.

There were a few rusted out shells here and there dumped in the desert at some point and largely forgotten about. Actually useful shit like what Bush and Blair had promised significant stockpiles of along with an active nuclear program? Nothing whatsoever.

>and the reasons I hear range from
In the first Gulf war, well fear of reprisal seems like it'd make sense. But fuck knows. After that his chemical warfare capability was dismantled and destroyed as demanded by the UN, so when Bush Jr. rolled in he simply couldn't.

It must certainly have been a useful reminder for Iran. "Ah. They want to take away all our best weapons, just like with Saddam. If they succeed in that with us, what else would they do again?"

That's actually called frag not shrapnel.
All that scrap metal you have probably came off some HE rounds.

Last year there was a forest fire near Gross Laasch in NE Germany.
It could only be put out with firefighting tanks due to the fire setting off a metric assload of WW2 ordnance in the ground.
Complete no go zone of at least 1km for helicopters and ground personnel.
Also they had to shut off the nearby Autobahn A14 because of it.

That was not even close to the most UXO rich areas we have here. God forbid those see a forest fire.
And none of those hold a candle to the Zone Rouge in France. That shit is something else.

Attached: urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-180713-99-136603-large-4-3-jpg.jpg (1024x1001, 186K)

>Is digging up and collecting WW1 shells dangerous?
No man, nothing wrong with that.....errr....by the way....you do have life insurance....right?

Are you blind?
The driving bands are frag yes, the rest are parts of shrapnel rounds

I build my own detectors and I have found some stuff but in the US we don't have nearly as cool of shit you guys do.

Its about as dangerous as digging up unstable 100+ years old explosives.

EODfag
>Is it...?
Yes.
>How do you...?
If you have to ask on here, you don't.

Attached: 20180709_083616.jpg (2576x1932, 3.16M)

My uncle had a friend who blew himself up fucking around with wwII uxos in Normandy.

That's what you can find in 30 minutes in Verdun with no detector whatsoever

Should have mentioned I was on a grass field. If its bare soil you can find shit just laying around yes

I'm assuming electrocution