Update Of Turkish M2 Ball

Since it is hot and sticky outside today and the grass is not drying out from the storms early this morning, there will be no mowing today. I will hit it after my 18 hour FD shift tomorrow evening. Today makes 40 years of wedded bliss for us, so we are going out to Foxwood's for an awesome dinner, just the two of us. When we get home I have to don a duty uniform, prepare my bunk duffel, and food for the day tomorrow because I go in for midnight. I am usually at the firehouse by 22:30, stow my food, make up my bunk, and catch the last of the late news turning in before 23:00. If there is an earlier call and I respond I go on the clock right then. I'll set an alarm and get up at 06:00 if there are no overnight calls and there is a shift change. Otherwise I will sleep in to make up for getting woken up in the middle of the night.

So, in anticipation of an upcoming range day, I spent some time in the nice cool basement de-linking some more of the Turkish M2 Ball ammo I got from Tacticalshit.com  The cardboard case is divided into three partitions, so I figured I would finish the first partition and use the space to store the Ziploc bag of machine gun links. In my previous post I described how easy it is to accomplish. I grabbed a piece of scrap PT deck board and clamped it in place on one of my Stanley Workmates. I placed a small bucket on the floor to my right to toss the links in. The .30 cal ammo can I have my M1 target ammo and accessories in was in front of me for the M2 Ball rounds to go into, and the pile of 4 round assemblies are sitting on the end of the board by the ammo can.

Below is a closeup of the end of the board where I dimpled it with a punch to keep the bullet point from sliding away as I pressed down.

Rather than taking a chance on chewing up my hands and fingers I wore a pair of gripper gloves to perform the de-linking operation.

Each 4 round assembly took only seconds to take apart. Links tossed in the bucket, rounds in the ammo can. Being dissimilar metals (steel links and brass cases) there was no electrolytic caused corrosion that made the components stick together or have to be cleaned. IMHO this ammo was properly stored in a dry environment. When I was done, this is what was left for the future; two partitions of ammo with the bag of links.

I sealed up the cardboard box with packing tape and labeled it with a Sharpie. Hmmmm.... a dilemma; where am I going to store a cardboard box of ammo? While my basement is nice and dry, all of my ammo in my large steel storage box is stored inside individual sealed 30 and 50 caliber ammo cans. So I made room in my super fortified and alarmed gun closet in the living area above grade. I just had to move some hard handgun cases around. As for the ammo can full of M2 Ball...

It already had a spot in the ammo box. Without counting I should now have about 132 loose rounds. The 6 loaded clips with cardboard covers are the Greek ammo that is going to be used for comparison. The white box are M1999 blanks and lying on the cover is the blank adapter. Years ago, we had a miniature poodle that my wife had trained to retrieve ducks. We would train him in the yard where my wife would throw the dummy duck high in the air, I would fire a blank, and as the duck fell she would yell "GET IT!" and he would get it and drag it back. The yellow device allows me to shoot my M1 as a single shot rifle. It locks down the bullet follower and allows the bolt to move freely to manually load a round and then automatically eject the brass. To remove it from the rifle you simply hold the bolt back and press the clip ejection button on the left side of the receiver and it pops out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I put a tape label on top differentiating the Turkish and Greek ammo head stamps. When I uploaded this picture I realized I incorrectly put "MKE 82" instead of the actual "MKE 83".  I'll fix it at a later date.

Stay tuned for the upcoming range report on how this ammo functions and performs. When I get a range day depends on weather, work, and family obligations. I should have multiple opportunities before Labor Day.