Two new OSS buys..

[Torch]

M1A1 pressure switch and M1 delay pencil

[ARTE ET MARTE]

Nice find !!, I have not a clue what these are, so give us a bit more info !! history etc are they rare?? please do not blow your hand off!!, cheers,Liam.

[Torch]

Hi Liam,both very inert but thank you for the concern as I have seen a few scary relics that have been dug up and placed on here for ID,the M1A1 pressure switch(the larger of the two) is just a remote means of detonating a charge by pressure applied to the prongs on top which are the only pieces visible when correctly dug in or you can remove that whole prong assembly and burying the complete unit with say a board on top to give you more coverage,these never contained anything apart from a small primer that was the intiating blast for the main charge...the unit can have a spring snout screwed in place of the nipple adaptor you can see at the far right on the top photo so i standard detonator can be pushed in and primacord cord attached or even slow burning fuse or a combination of both if you wanted a delay from say someone running over the device at a gate to them going inside the building before i was demolished...the second of the two that looks like a pencil is just a US copy of the british time delay pencil but has a fixed nipple in its end,the thread on that nipple will screw into any preformed and tinned demolition charge and also into a handgrenade casing if you wanted to go that way...the copper end is the crush tube sleeve and inside that is an ampoule of acetone at different strengths,the colour of the safety strip you can see in the side(red)tells you the length of delay at certain temps,red being 12 - 32 minutes(the great variation comes from the differences you get between extreme cold and extreme heat)just behind the safety strip is the inspection whole that is used to check after you've crushed the ampoule that the retaining wire hasnt broken and the plunger come forward to strike the primer...the timepencil was used alot by OSS but not really only used by them..was a standard piece of demo equipment but originated from office of strategic services.
So what do you enjoy collecting Liam?