25 pounder traverse mechanism
 

Attachment 83893 Attachment 83894
I seperated the two main parts of the traverse mechanism, and had started the cleanup before I remembered to photograph.
Attachment 83895 Attachment 83896

Attachment 83897

A few other pieces that got attention today.
Attachment 83902 Attachment 83898
The glass tube on spirit level broke in transit. I thought I could live with it like that, but I can't, so I will insert a replacement. A job I'm not really looking forward to.
Attachment 83899 Attachment 83900
These brake brackets are gonna save me a whole lotta work. Tomorrow they go to the sandblasters.
I'll need to get U bolts made.
Attachment 83901

Tony,

Changing the spirit level vile is literally a 5 minute job , knock the tapered pin out of one end with a small punch ,the cap is just pushed in not threaded so you can push it out by smashing and cleaning the glass out with a screwdriver and pushing the cap out.
If you have or find any old builders sprit levels just break them up and remove the levels ,they do come in a few sizes though, push the replacement vile in and replace the cap , this is how I repair any broken ones I find.
The parts look great by the way ,plenty of elbow grease !

Rob......................rnixartillery.

25 pounder NOS wheel nuts
 

After seven decades, my set of NOS wheel nuts have seen light again.
Attachment 83903
The outer packaging was surprisingly brittle. I expected it to be greasier, but if it ever was, it had dried out. Flakes went everywhere when I unrolled the first layer.
Attachment 83904 Attachment 83905
Second and third layers, were grease paper. You can see the final layer of wrapping has been done in such a way as to avoid any two nuts touching. Very clever and quite effective.
Attachment 83906 Attachment 83907
Not one spot of corrosion. Absolutely spotlessly clean, 70+ year old metal.
Only needed a wash with petrol and they're ready to paint.
Why couldn't they wrap entire CMPs that way!

Thanks Rob. I will do that. I have some modern spirit viles, but they are both too tubby to fit.
I'll have to get some thin pin punches, too. All of mine were bought for working on the CMP, so you could imagine they are not quite petite enough for this job.

The unveiling
 

Very good to see your unwrapping pictures Tony - done with appropriate reverence and recording. Well done!

That's interesting Tony, those handbrake brackets being cast, the ones on my axle are fabricated.
Is that different manufacturers or different dates of manufacture?

Ken

Hello Ken,

I'm thinking it is probably a difference between manufacturers, but can not say that with any certainty. I'm solely basing that on other examples of differences that I have been told were down to manufacturers production choices. See the following 4 photos.
Attachment 84036 Attachment 84037
Attachment 84038 Attachment 84039

Rob N will be the one to know for sure. I do have several repro 25pr manuals on the way, and they might shed some light, but I expect by that time we'll know from another member!

Attachment 84040
These are my brackets as returned from sandblasters, this afternoon. The simple one of them was still in it's original wrapping (VERY yucky, like treacle). The packing date on that one was 1979. Wonder if repacked then, or actually manufactured in 70s. If made then, a difference of over 30yrs between WWII manufacture and that one COULD just be design changes. In short, can someone plese put us out of our misery with this question!

I've emailed someone who has a good saddle which was advertised for sale some time ago. If still available, and affordable, I think I'll take it. Fingers are crossed. Wonder what the chances are of finding original trails?!

P.S: I've started making enquiries for quote/s on making the two U bolts for my brackets. Watch this space.

The Brake parts will have been repacked when the storage shelf life was up ,I should imagine they were war time manufacture.
The fabricated handbrake parts are more of a nationality thing as well as manufacture, The Australians experimented a lot more with flat plate construction possibly to speed up production ,as we know they created the welded carriage and saddle and used it widely as the local pattern/production not to mention the Australian Short.

Rob....................rnixartillery

Thanks Rob,

Now we both/all know.

Dial sight carrier
 

When I recieved my package of parts from Canada, about a month ago now, there were several small parts whose purpose were unknown to me, until doing some re-reading of the manual. One Page clearly shows a rather complex device which, I imagine, is used to secure the dial sight to the upper section of the carrier. Kind of a wing-nut! A strip of metal, maybe 1.5" in length, works as a retaining piece, to prevent the aforementioned wing-nut from becoming undone to the point of falling away. Those, and the screws to put it all together, were in my parcel. I'm grateful they had been kept by the previous owner of my parts. Such seemingly insignificant pieces could easily been discarded or lost.
Attachment 84221
I expect the spring loaded ratchet mechanism of the 'nut' (seen best in left photo below), is to prevent over-tightening, which may have caused damage to something?!?! Incidentally, it takes considerable force to turn the nut to the point of activating the ratchet.
Attachment 84220 Attachment 84222

25 pounder, original tool box.
 

Another quality piece arrived today.
Attachment 84399 Attachment 84400
A very nice 25pdr Tool Box, that hasn't seen much work, if any, in it's long history. All the screws undo without any coercion at all. The canvas is in very good shape. At some point the two wooden blocks on the lid will be removed, and I will carefully lift the canvas off for cleaning. The strip around the outside edge of the lid is leather. A new piece is coming from UK, courtesy of the folks that made me the straps used on the shield.
Attachment 84402 Attachment 84404
I am giving consideration to sanding it back, and re-finishing, complete with stencil markings. Fairly sure I have located a suitable font for the stencils. What I don't know is if the vinyl film will stay firmly stuck down long enough for me to give the number of coats of paint to replicate the buildup of paint thickness which the original markings have.
Attachment 84403
Can anyone help me with identifying the one damaged character that I can't decipher?
Is it a letter O or numeral 0, or perhaps something else entirely? To me it looks to read: No. - CM-1600 Do you agree?

Part Number CM-1600 ,stencilled on the front of all 17 and 25 pdr tool boxes !

Rob................rnixartillery.

I've started cleaning up the metal parts. The wooden blocks on box ends, where the rope handles go through, don't come off. They are held in place by two screws (easily undone) and two other fasteners that don't have any visible way to undo them. Possibly some form of rivet?
Attachment 84487 Attachment 84488
The hinges are seriously heavy duty, and were actually welded together, not simply roll formed. They will never fall apart.

The metal strap of the lock ie also held by a combination of screws and rivete, so it to will be staying put.

I have spoken to a leatherwork business, and they are custom making a replacement leather strip for around the edge of box lid. It secures the canvas in place. Vegetable tanning was used for industrial leather usage around the time the box was made, so that is how I have requested the strip. It will be very dark brown or black in color, and 3mm thick. After measuring the current leather thickness, my leather guy could work out how thick the original would have been. He feels it may have shrunk by ahout 0.5mm over the last 70yrs. All going well, it should be ready to despatch to me by early next week.

The Australians were not the only ones to use fabricated and welded parts: the Canadian C No.2 and 4 Saddles were manufactured in this way.

The CM-1600 box for tools was labelled a CCM-1600 in Canada - the Canadians seemed to be very keen to add the extra 'C' prefix to anything of Canadian design/manufacture. The smaller parts box was the CM-1599, labelled 'SPR.PTS. 25-PR' on the upper line, and 'PT.NO.CM1599' on the lower line.

By the time of the last disposals of 25-pdrs in the 1970s, 25-pdrs in Australia were a mix and match of parts due to replacements.

Interesting your images taken at Bandiana all show early breech rings with the rounded curve for the sweep of the breech block handle. Australian breech rings, like most Canadian b/rings, have a series of 'flats' to make up the curve for handle clearance, rather than the smooth, continuous curve. The attached image illustrates this - the breech ring is a Mk.2 manufactured by Chubb Australia in 1942. You'll recognise it Tony - it's not too far from you at Tiaro, and is the one we have both taken measurements from.

Mike

Yes Mike, I know the Tiaro gun very well.
Sad that it is in a state of deterioration. It is even noticable in a number of my photo, which span little more than several years. Tyres are splitting and falling apart. Paint that once looked good (it wasn't when you looked closely) is now featuring prominent rust streaks. Some parts never had a decent layer of paint at all, and they are well ahead in the race to corrode away.

25 pdr tool box refinishing
 

I've been stripping all removable parts off my tool box, finishing last night by untacking the canvas from the lid. A template has been made to fashion a new one. Could get that done tonight, but I'm tired, so may not put in the effort. I did enough for today, I think.
Attachment 84505 Attachment 84506
The manufacturer did nice solid dovetail joints.
Attachment 84507
All the wood has been sanded, primed, and stop putty applied to the worst imperfections.
Attachment 84508
Even had enough time to get several small parts refinished in the final color.
If you look really closely at the middle piece, you can see the manufacturers date stamp with year of production and the broad arrow.
Attachment 84509
Oh, and all the metal pieces have been sandblasted and finished, too.
I won't be putting paint on those. I want a slightly more aesthetic look than just usable.

Attachment 84532 Attachment 84533
Template for the lid canvas had to be altered. My roll of canvas has a slight stretch to it, and to be sure the finished product looked right, I had to reduce template dimensions to accomodate the stretch. I really can't tell yet if canvas stretch property is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. We'll find out when I go to fit canvas to the lid! Not the best moment for that discovery, so I could get all the hard work done, only to find I have wasted my time entirely. If that happens, I can enlarge the template back to 'no stretch' size and give the job to my local upholstery guys.
Attachment 84534
Discovered some very interesting facts about original canvas. Firstly, it wasn't colored until after it was on the lid and the leather edge strip was in place. Although it was colored insitu, that occured before the two timber blocks were screwed down. Also, the skirt around the edges, being double layered, folds back up and under the top layer BUT is not sewn anywhere except the corners. Instead, it is the tacks along the leather stip do that job. Original canvas is a very coarse weave that would have made waterproofing difficult, and because of all the perforations from fitting, I suspect the waterproofing may have occured with application of the color.
Attachment 84535
Around the edge of the lid, a leather strip was fastened with a large amount of upholstery cut tacks. They were approx 1" apart, with some put along the canvas berore leather was put in place. Guess this was to hold canvas securely prior to tacking the leather strip. There were 2 sizes of cut tacks used. Some are 3/8", some are just over 3/4". There is no pattern to which were used where, as far as I could tell. Long ones weren't used in corners, nor were they spaced along the sides amongst the short ones, with any discernible order. For replacement, I have ordered the larger size only, because I'm intending to use the original holes. Also ordered a propper tack hammer for the task. The new leather strip is vegetable tanned, as the original would have been, and should arrive sometime this week.
Attachment 84536
Instead of going on with canvas work last night, I put some time into reproducing the markings on the box. Not as straight forward as I had hoped. Some characters in one font looked correct, some didn't. Other characters from another font looked right, others were wrong. In short, I used characters of 4 different fonts to make one set of markings. Even the '&' symbol had to be searched for. Most military style stencils I have on file, do not have that symbol, so getting something passable became the goal. I think the finished product will look reasonably presentable, although not identical to the original. When you consider the box (and significant pieces of the gun itself) has been completely remade with non genuine color, canvas, leather strap, and metal components that are not painted, etc., the difference in stencil characters really isn't a huge concern!

Tony.

One thing baffles me slightly with this box , I have not seen another with
' Anti tank Guns ' stencilled and I have had dozens of the these boxes through my hands.
We all know the 25 pdr is not an anti tank gun and the majority of these boxes produced ended up on 25 pdr's ,may be its an Australian thing !

Rob......................rnixartillery.

That would have been handy to know before I sanded the original markings into oblivion. Still, they're gone now.

If it's of any significance, the date stamped onto one of the lid pieces is, 1953 or possibly 1958.

The Australian 25-pdr was issued with an Armour Piercing Shot projectile, to be fired using any of three charge values
(1) 'Charge Super' plus increment
(2) 'Charge Super'
(3) Charge 3.

CMF artillery units regularly practiced moving target/anti-tank shooting techniques on the anti-armour range at Puckapunyal up into the early 1960s. The Australian 25-pdr handbooks of the 1950s include descriptions of the AP Shot round and the EFCs that each powder type & quantity resulted in.

An AP Shot may only have 'annoyed' a T-54 or Type 59, but smaller vehicles like APCs would still get a quite a shock from one.

The label was common on these Australian-made boxes of the period.

Mike

Another nice 25 pdr reference book arrived today.
Attachment 84588
Lots of useful information, and pictures to help it all make sense.
Attachment 84589 Attachment 84590
Attachment 84591 Attachment 84592
The last image is particularly useful right now!

Attachment 84594
Attachment 84595
Attachment 84596
The canvas for the tool box lid is now finished.
A single stitch run has been run along all sides, beneath where the leather strip will go, to keep the edges fairly straight. Before it's completely tacked in place, I'll iron the edges and apply some spray starch to help the edges retain their shape.

Incidentally, I have not made any attempt to clean inside of the box itself, but did clean inside the lid. Sandblasting isn't just for metal! The lid will need another blasting before reassembly. It has some PVA glue residue to come off.

25 pdr tool box lid
 

Attachment 84665
New leather strip for the tool box lid has now arrived.
It was custom made and sent within 2-3 days, by an Australian business that I will definately use again. I can think of several areas that will require custom made leather pieces, including straps for the sunshine roof on my CMP.
Attachment 84674 Attachment 84666
My cut tacks are here now too. This is equivelent to the larger of the sizes originally used, and they are SHARP! I'll do a test hammer through the end of my leather strip, to see how easy they drive and what, if anything, happens to the leather. It's a good thickness so hopefully they won't distort on the way through. If they do, every hole will need to be punched, or have an awl poked through.
Attachment 84667
I've been cleaning up all the screw heads by sanding to shiny, then applying two layers of gun blue. They should look quite nice when finished, and will match the brackets and hinges. I know it's a lot of work, but I thought they came up well.....until I took the closeup photo. Now I can see there is still grot in several of the grooves. Those will get another run through with sandpaper. I'm sure my eyesight is getting worse.

If the good lords willing and the creeks don't rise, I should have color on the box itself this weekend, and the lid should be completely finished.

Getting there.
Attachment 84706

Attachment 84707

Attachment 84708

Attachment 84709

Attachment 84710

Still have a dozen or so screws to clean and blue, before the lid can be properly attached.
It's just sitting on the box, in the above photo.
I found I am not good at nailing leather straight, but it sure is secured well.
Those tacks cut right through leather, canvas, and harwood with very little effort.

25 Pounder Tool Box, finished!
 

And just like that, it's finished.
Attachment 84731 Attachment 84732
Attachment 84736 Attachment 84734
Attachment 84735
I'll line the inside with something like felt. Then I can store number one good things in there, and keep them secure with one of the 1940s locks I bought a few weeks ago.


Next project!

Looks great Tony! That box is "filled" with an incredible amount of detail.

Thanks Wayne. The metal hardware was the most time consuming. So much wet sanding of screw heads, followed by two coats of gun blue.

This coming Saturday I hope to be going on a trip to retrieve a set of brake parts to complete my axle. I've been offered a set of the genuine brake components, and when they are cleaned and painted, my axle will then be complete. When that is finished, I'm at a bit of a loose end really. Don't have any other parts to go onto, and don't yet have the room for working on anything big. I really need to get the cabin on my truck. It takes a lot of space in the workshop, sitting on the rolling frame I assembled it on.

Also on Saturday, I am taking one of my 16" CMP wheels to the fellow who I bought my grey truck from, so he can look into why the military pattern tyres aren't fitting. He swears he has put those tyres onto identical wheels without problems. While there, I'll be picking up a radiator fan shroud, passenger side floor grip ring, two windscreen frames & glass, and another one of the civilian pattern tyres to replace the one that went flat driving on the highway months ago. I have not driven that vehicle further than a few miles from home, since having no spare tyre.

Level now has a new bubble inside.
Attachment 84955
A new vial was found that was the exact size I wanted.

A fortnight ago, I made a trip to get the main brake parts.
The pull rods, cross shaft brackets, and U bolts are finished and temporarily fitted.
Attachment 84956 Attachment 84957
Some minor finishing pieces for the brake system are yet to be received, and one of the cross shaft bushings is being fabricated by a friend of mine, who is also a MLU member!
Attachment 84958 Attachment 84959
Speaking of the cross shaft piece, the handbrake lever attached to it, has a slight bend that will be knocked out tomorrow afternoon. A neighbour and I will tackle that job after work. He has an oxy set and an anvil. It'll be basic blacksmithing work, but because the lever is welded to the cross shaft, a second person is needed to hold the shaft up, while the other one belts the brake lever back into shape again. It's fairly thick metal, so will take some persuasion.


I won't be getting the sight assembly I wanted. Although a repairable one was available here in Australia, another from UK became available and was in full working order. I overlooked the local one, in preference for the better condition (and dearer) overseas one. Wasn't fair to keep the other guy hanging after I had decided to spend the extra for other one, which as it turns out won't be happening, so guess I get none out of two. A technical hitch with export/customs leaving UK caused the package to be returned to sender. Apparently the issue was their inability to scan within the multiple layers of metal, and because they couldn't be sure there wasn't anything hidden inside, they rejected the parcel. Afterwards, the shipping company stated the assembly could have proceeded if it had been totally pulled apart, for internal imspection. There's a lesson learned at considerable time and expense, to both parties involved.

Once the remaining brake pieces arrive, they and the cross shaft (with lever) will be finished and put in place, completing the entire axle. Because I don't have anything else to start on, I'll be stopping work on the gun at that point, so another post or so will see the end of progress for an unknown period.

Incoming mail today brings a nice genuine 25 & 17 pounder spare parts roll.
Attachment 85151 Attachment 85152
Attachment 85153 Attachment 85154
If I am reading correctly, the roll has the following markings.

C.M 1541
ROLL SPARE PARTS
Q.F 25 & 17 PR. MK I
P. J
I'm not sure about the '1541' nor the 'P.J', but that's what it looks like to me, anyway.
I do wish P.J had looked after his things better. :D

Attachment 85155
By pure coincidence, I bought a small cotton canvas tarp on the way home, to be used on my CMP sunshine roof. Should be sufficient material left over to make a copy of the spares roll. Guess I'll have to cut some more stencils.