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Posted: 1/25/2013 7:00:14 PM EDT
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In response to the thread that questioned the legality of live hand grenades, I have had a member provide the fee for a tax stamp for me to build a live grenade using binary explosives as a filler. This thread will detail my build progress with photos, drawings, and notes for any willing to do the same. This will be a technical thread surrounding the build. Please confine any bickering and purse swinging to another thread.
Legal stuff: Everything I am doing is 100% legal and by the book. I will obtain an ATF-approved Explosive DD tax stamp before obtaining any explosives. Using binary filler may not be legal in all areas, YMMV, consult a doctor if erection lasts more than 4 hours, etc... All work on this project will be documented and licensed using the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. I am doing this for two reasons: 1. To put a hand grenade in my collection 2. To assist any law-abiding DD collector to experience the same joy of owning a hand grenade. 
I am completing the Form 1 this weekend and it goes in the mail Monday. UPDATE: Form sent to Martinsburg 1/28. Check cashed 2/6 |
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The was a thread here that got me thinking about an idea about molotov cocktails i found informative
http://www.ar15.com/archive/topic.html?b=6&f=21&t=338141 you could engrave the "ring" and that could possibly be the "DD" if you wanted to test your grenade. |
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The was a thread here that got me thinking about an idea about molotov cocktails i found informative http://www.ar15.com/archive/topic.html?b=6&f=21&t=338141 you could engrave the "ring" and that could possibly be the "DD" if you wanted to test your grenade. I'm hoping that I can engrave the spoon as the receiver of the grenade. I will get clarification from tech branch. Otherwise, it will be the fuze assy. |
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Completed the Form 1.
I went with WINGNUT87 as the serial number. For the next couple months I'll focus on fuze construction and mechanical construction of the grenade body. Until the Form 1 is returned with an approved tax stamp, I'll confine myself to testing only fuze designs with net explosive weights under 1/4 oz so as not to run afoul of state and federal law. 
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Are you required to construct your own fuze, or can you use an M228 from a training grenade? I am going to try to recondition and reload an M228 fuze, but only if I can do it safely and ensure reliable time delay element burn and ignition. Failing that, I can notionally redesign the M228 for reloadability. |
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you will have to get a fel first that will involve building a type 1 magazine to keep it in before they will approve a dd explosive I'm genuinely curious, where can I find the differentiation between a large bore destructive device and an explosive destructive device? I poured over 26 U.S.C. § 5845(F) before even considering this project and I couldn't find any difference as far as the law is concerned. And when I did the Form 1 for this and my 60mm mortar, I only put "Destructive Device". If I missed something, this will be a rather short thread. |
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Are you required to construct your own fuze, or can you use an M228 from a training grenade? I am going to try to recondition and reload an M228 fuze, but only if I can do it safely and ensure reliable time delay element burn and ignition. Failing that, I can notionally redesign the M228 for reloadability. I've looked into this and have prints and chemical composition lists of modern hand grenades if you want I can email them to you. I'd go the pre modern route though and use a black powder delay like they did before they went with smokeless fuzes. Some of the chemicals they use for the modern delay aren't easy to get. Unfortunately when my laptop died I lost all my MKII data but the function was pretty similar, the biggest difference being vents for the the burning black powder delay element. |
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Are you required to construct your own fuze, or can you use an M228 from a training grenade? I am going to try to recondition and reload an M228 fuze, but only if I can do it safely and ensure reliable time delay element burn and ignition. Failing that, I can notionally redesign the M228 for reloadability. I've looked into this and have prints and chemical composition lists of modern hand grenades if you want I can email them to you. I'd go the pre modern route though and use a black powder delay like they did before they went with smokeless fuzes. Some of the chemicals they use for the modern delay aren't easy to get. Unfortunately when my laptop died I lost all my MKII data but the function was pretty similar, the biggest difference being vents for the the burning black powder delay element. I'll take any information you have. I appreciate it. What I am looking to do with the fuze assembly is to seal visco fuse into the fuze assembly to act as a time-delay element. However, I think I am going to wait on the fuze assembly as that is probably more straight forward than the body. As far as the body is concerned, I initially thought about a simple cast or machined body, but then decided on a pre-fragmented design. I considered tungsten balls in a polymer shell, but then researched the outlandish cost of tungsten ball bearings. So, I am approaching this project as an experiment to see how simple of a design I can come up with. The ultimate goal is to make this grenade using materials commonly available and sourced primarily at bigbox stores. Today I am trying a few different methods to cast body parts. A couple observations so far (I'll post pictures when I get my camera back from my wife): 1. Crossman Copperhead BB's are not made to the standards they were when I was a kid. They now have copper plating that seems to be flaking off and don't have the consistancy they used to. and 2. A cue ball from a billiards set is 2.25 inches in diameter and is available in your local Wal-Mart's sporting goods section for just over $3.00. So today I am trying to create a mould to best mimic the M67's 2.5in diameter and use Crossman BB's to comprise the body. I made a mould out of plaster of paris using a stress ball I found at work. This leaves me with a plaster hemisphere with an outside diameter of 2.5in. I lined the inside with BB's and poured paraffin in to keep them in place using the cue ball as the inside form. The end output will hopefully be a hemisphere of copper washed steel .177 cal balls suspended in a paraffin medium. I'll use this to build different moulds or to try a lost wax casting using aluminum or lightweight material. More to follow. |
Here's the first go at a casting to check the plausibility of using a mould with BB's. I cast this hemisphere with paraffin. Taking it apart, I took a photo of the results of the first go. Obviously, I have to work on material flow into the cavities between the BBs. Today I ran to Harbor Freight and picked up a hand-held vacuum pump and some quick set epoxy. I'm going to cast a hemisphere tonight using some vacuum pressure to make sure the epoxy flows into the cavities. Just taking baby steps at the moment. |
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