Click here for my replica sales page If you are a frequent visitor to the site, you will know I have been dabbling with 3D printing for a while now. If it’s your first time here, I’ve been dabbling with 3D printing for a while . Having honed my skills a little, and after joining forces with a producer of the STL files (Black Swan Prints), I am now in a position to offer for sale a selection of WW2 replica ordnance models. Please visit my Replica Sales page to see what’s on offer! All the replicas are non-functional, have no moving parts and are not capable of being used as ordnance. They are ..read more

Way back in 2011, I was looking around for a new site to dig, and came across some pictures on an urban explorer website, of a site where there appeared to be ammunition cans sticking out of the ground. It took a little while to track the site down, and even longer to find the landowner, but eventually I found him and permission was granted to dig the site. Over the following years, I visited the site on a number of occasions, recovering a vast quantity of WW2 relics. The site was even shown on TV, with Weedon Ordnance Depot featuring in its own episode, with thousands of relics recovered on c ..read more

I’ve been in my house for more than 16 months now, so not exactly ‘new’, but kinda is! Anyway, in a previous post I showed a large shed I had built in the back garden to house my collection. However, I underestimated the space required and about 10% of my collection had to stay packed away in boxes as I physically couldn’t fit it in. If you haven’t seen it yet, below is a link to my post showing what is in the big shed….. New House, New Display Space What with work, doing up the inside of the house and various other things, this second display space kept getting pushed back. However, I have ..read more

I have been busy with the 3D printer since posting my original thread on the subject, (link below). 3D Printed WW2 Replicas & Models Since then I have trawled the net looking for decent files to print further models and replicas. The problem I found was that many of the files I found were of a scale that was just too small, in the order of 1/35th and such like. I did find a few 1/6th scale models, but even these were either poor quality, or still too small. The ones I did find of high quality usually turned out to be files that were 1:1 files for WW2 weapons. These were multiple print fi ..read more

It has been more than 2 years since I last went digging for WW2 relics, but I have finally got myself back out there. I had spent a couple of years doing nothing but digging for the TV show, ‘WW2 Treasure Hunters’, and needed a break from the mud, backaches, lacerations and hours of cleaning dirty relics. I never lost my love of WW2 relics and the history each one holds, but had fallen out of love with digging! I intended to take a few months off, but then covid hit, so that few months became a couple of years. I decided to get back out there, but wanted somewhere to dig that I knew would be p ..read more

With the advent of 3D printers a few years back, it became possible for anyone to print a huge variety of models, spare parts, decorations, tools, toys……you name it…… If you could find a file online, (or put the model file together yourself), you could print whatever you want. However, to begin with the cost of the printers was too high for most people to justify buying one, and the number of files available online was quite small. Now though, the printers are much more affordable and the number of 3D printable files available online stands in the millions. I got a 3D printer this year as a bi ..read more

I have been having rather a busy time of late, both in and outside of work. I’ve moved house 3 times in the past 2 years, but am now settled in my new house, and needed to get my collection back out. The challenge I faced was where to display my collection of relics, as previously I had them in a garage, but my new house doesn’t have one! So, I got a decent sized shed, (or so I thought), and had it erected on a solid concrete base. I lined the inside with thick plastic sheeting, put tongue and groove over the top of that, and used leftover carpet from my living room on the floor. Reason for th ..read more

Make a one-time donation Your contribution is appreciated. Donate Identification of British .303 inch ammunition can be quite challenging, especially for the beginner. The .303 began life as far back as 1889 and was originally used in the Lee-Metford rifle. Since then it has under gone a number of changes, with a wide variety of bullet types, and is still produced today. It was the main cartridge used by the British army until it was finally replaced in the 1950s by the 7.62×51 Nato cartridge. The general dimensions of the .303 cartridge are as follows; Case type Rimmed, bottleneck B ..read more

I have been gathering a few more WW2 manuals over the past few months, so I’ve put together another 100 or so on this page, British, American, German and also Italian and Japanese! These are in addition to the ones I had already uploaded on the following pages…. WW2 Manuals – Downloadable More WW2 Manuals – Downloadable -The more unusual type of manuals! WW2 Aircraft Manuals – Downloadable US WW2 Ammunition – The Complete Manual – Downloadable Over the years I’ve been collecting WW2 relics, I have needed to identify some unusual stuff, and these manuals have proved an invaluable resource. I wo ..read more

Make a one-time donation Your contribution is appreciated. Donate The German army used the 7.92mm cartridge extensively in WW2, with many of their front line smalls arms utilising the cartridge, as well as being used in the MGs of some aircraft of the Luftwaffe.  Those weapons using this cartridge included the Fallschirmjägergewehr 42; Gewehr 41; Gewehr 43; Gewehr 98; Karabiner 98k; Maschinengewehr 08; MG 15; Maschinengewehr  30; Maschinengewehr 34; Maschinengewehr 42; MG 81……… The 7.92×57mm Mauser is a rimless bottle-necked rifle cartridge, produced by a number of different countrie ..read more