It look awesome :)

About an inch and a half/40mm long, the original was about 4 and a half feet/137cm long

Oh, I know, lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ1Oi15044c

WIll you be at AC this year?

No, but I will have art there.

It's Atomic!

Boom, baby!

What did you use for a curve?

If yo mean the ogive, just some rough cuts to reduce the bulk, then a hand file.

And just to add extra authenticity:

http://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Ura...../dp/B000796XXM

Yeah, but that is U238, and you need U235

No problem!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_spinner

Uhmm, that would take a while.

But worth it for the authenticity!

Why is it that when I see it, I start wondering how you'd convert such a shell to an IED?

A modified fuse or some such. Visually, not much more than a cell phone or some similar small doo-hicky strapped to the body with a few wires going into a modified fuse body, perhaps.

I've seen a dummy round of that at the Atomic Test Center Museum in Las Vegas. It looks about right, I may have a photo of the dummy round, which is painted equipment OD of that 1950's brownish shade, and covered with yellow lettering. You really ought to take a look at that museum if you ever are in Vedas and want to spend 3 hours.

I have other photos of the same thing, though if you have a close up for the stenciling, that would be handy.

I'll dig for it.

Damn neat!

Oh this is cool. Nice work.

Thanks, though I'm now turning an even better one.

Your model work is soooooo awesome. I've always loved that sort of thing (especially movie special effects props-watching the USS Reliant model get auctioned off was misery). I'd love to do that sort of thing myself but I'm terrible at math, and I know that you need to do a lot of measuring.

Measuring is the simplest addition, you can even use a ruler as a number line (actually how I was taught as a child). Or, with practice, a good eyeballing for proportion. And mostly it is simple transferring numbers, not actually calculating anything. Like on the shell, I set the stop and start points for the ogive of the forward part with calipers, as it is a precise scale part, but the curve itself was done freehand with a file. Scaling is also simple, I either use a calculator, won't trust my long division, and/or create a scaling line (I'll post a diagram in scraps, as it is a really handy way of figuring out dimensional details for an unscaled image) to work out the dimensions of details.

I have a lot of trouble with that sort of stuff due to my dyscalculia. I can do it but it takes a long time lol

sympathize, have a bit of that too.

The footage of this thing being tested is just nuts. I've done a lot of reading about the stuff they used to do during testing x.x just...nuts, man.

Crazy days. Like the X-20 Dyna-Soar, which was first proposed s a near-orbital atomic bomber in the days before ICBMs or the Navajo missile program, an Mach3+ giant intercontinental nuclear-armed cruise missile. Or the other extreme, small tactical nukes down to ten ton yields for battlefield uses (thought the blast would have that small an effect, the radiation pulse would still be almost as lethal as a near kiloton device)

I think the most ludicrous was the spacecraft that would drop bombs out the back in order to take off & propel itself. The ones that horrified me the most were all the times where they knew they were sending people into danger, yet did it anyways, and in many cases did it on purpose.

Orion. Back in the bad old days before they fully appreciated the full long-term effect of that kind of thing. As for exposure, they needed data and lots of "guinea pigs", and no cost was too high to get it done. Even when they had a pretty good grasp of effects, they needed hard numbers and real world experiance to get definitive ansewers. The "UFO" cattle mutilations were part of it too, getting data on down wind effects of long range and long term fall out effects.

I try not to think of the stuff they must get up to now.

Over my Have Gun, Will Travel years I acquired a number of defense-related items (most of them fished out of the trash). I saw a lot more -- some I probably still can't discuss -- but I never saw anything like this!

Although I have held a depleted Uranium shell in my (gloved) hands, carefully, because despite its low Surface Activity, even depleted Uranium is still a toxic heavy metal. It was over 25 years ago, but I think it was part of a sabot round.

Uhm, I would have though the round would be plated, as uranium will oxidize, (purple at one point, I'm told) as well as provide a level of shielding, and/or alloyed for optimum mechanical properties. One of the weirder things about it, is that it has several crystaline phases, which change its density, mechanical properties, and effectiveness as a fissile element.

Actually, it was in a full metal jacket, if you will. Elemental Uranium itself is relatively friable, so it needs a casing to actually get it through the armor. I don't recall what the exotic alloy was, but it had a faded yellowish color, slightly iridescent in the right light, but that might have been a final wash of some sort. Many military ordnance products have a similar finish. I remember asking why the rubber protective clothing gloves were necessary, and the tech just told me, "You can't be too careful."

Yes, while Uranium Oxide is usually yellow (it was used in ceramic glazes for centuries) it can also be black. Both Uranium Oxide and Plutonium Oxide can be mauve, or purplish, but I can't find any evidence that either is ever a magenta liquid as shown in Back to the Future!

I still wonder about the mechanical properties of U. Totally understand the value of density for a penitrator, but such also needs to be pretty strong to not break up prematurely, especially against oblique surfaces.
The tinted color on the thing was likely an anodized finish.

I think the purpose of the exotic alloy shell was to (a.) help with the penetration qualities, and (b.) limit unintended contamination (stuff gets into everything, even when it's as fuel pellets). My guess was some sort of anodized finish, too. I have some WWII-vintage .45 cartridges with a phosphate wash of some sort, and they have a very similar appearance.

The WWII stuff might have clear, now yellowed, lacquered cases. I have a couple of boxes of '43 vintage of .45 ACP that matches your description. Re the dart - I doubt the jacket would have provided substantial mechanical support (fierce energies there, saw some ultra-flash photography of steel test slugs folding up dramatically as they dug into oblique plate) I had heard, but from an iffy source, that the U would fracture away at the contact end, but would continue through, progressively fracturing at the front but the body behind would remain intact to carry though, the impact heated material going incindiary to make a nasty bit even worse. Again, still wonder about the range of mechanical properties of the stuff.

Yes, sir, I've got the same stuff! Many of the flattish, gray-brown cardboard boxes with their happy little copper noggins to the sky and the flaps that tuck away fifteen of John Moses Browning's little brainchildren at each end. (* sigh *) I bought what was supposed to be a quite large ammo can of them at a show ten years or so ago; the top four or five layers were authentic U.S. .45 ACP in proper boxes -- many still sealed -- from many makers (Remington/Union, Winchester, EC, AC, Lake City, I think) but the bottom was at least as many layers of commercial stuff from the '40s through the '80s. I called the old buzzard on his trick at the next show, and while he wouldn't give me a refund, he cut me some very good deals on some more authentic relics (fool me twice, et cetera).

I know that for anti-tank use, the effective range is softball range. The penetrators the 105mm and 120mm tank rounds use, though, tend to be long and narrow, tapering with a heavy ring about amidships. The anti-tank rounds are also sabot shells, and the story is that the point becomes sharper as it penetrates the armor. Sounds counter-intuitive to me, but you should read the stuff I work with every day... The projectile I held looked for all the world like a really big (85mm-90mm dia. -- 3.5" for us average dupes) boat-tail, spire-point hunting bullet. I can say it was probably intended to be used at ranges of less than 100 meters, on very large targets.

If you trust Wicked Pedia, more about DU munitions (stuff I may not be at liberty to discuss!) here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Ammunition

The bullet-looking thing, if was saboted, was an old-school penitrator, and didn't have DU in it, tungsten instead. those were often not very sub-calibre and it might have even been for a 105, but more likely a 120. Very early ones were rather stubby things. DU came in with the darts, or slugs inside light windscreen shapes for smaller calibre guns, and the rings come off, ya know. Effective ranges were on the order of some thousands of yards, not hundreds of feet. Various flavors of modern HE anti-tank were not saboted (with the exception of some guided rounds, full calibre for a 105, and saboted for a 120, for example) as volume more than velocity is needed. Some old school saboted penitrators had a touch of HE in them for post-penitration detonation.

I think I had that kit, way back when! I don't remember it having shells, but 1962 was a long time ago.

If I'm recalling correctly, it had a simple "bullet" shaped thing(?). I've got the current re-release done up as "Red Hot Reds" the one that got off four live shots during the Warsaw Pact incursion back in the early '60s. Four different guns managed atomic live fire in the dozen-odd hours of the action. The others got off only single rounds, one was destroyed by counter-battery fire, one was self-destructed with an atomic round to prevent capture, and the last one got off what was, in effect, the last shot of the conflict. That they were used at all seemed to be the deciding factor in the early halt of the incursion. Soviet planners did not expect that the US would use atomics so early in an uncertain situation, and it was only by dumb luck that those guns were already in place during a "special asset" exercise (atomics on site) and could deliver accurate fire right when it was needed. Red Hot Reds managed a rather unorthidox attack, not using spotting shots and trusting that anything in the approximate area would still be effective. It was a gamble that paid off, as it was a bridge head that had large formations around it to provide defense and engineering support if the bridge was attacked. The shots destroyed the formations as well as the bridge itself and turned back additional traffic (mostly E.Germans and Poles who were not all that keen on the action to begin with). The units that were lost was due to the procedure of using conventional HE spotting shots, which were intended for accuracy (15KT sounds like a lot, but against armor divisions, needed to be directly on target to be effective), but also advertised the gun's location.

I guess you're talking about a war game.

War game? Heavens no, it was in all the papers. Soviet force jump the West German boarder during an overnight storm, doing so with simply the forces already on hand instead of any build-up that would hint at trouble. The intent was to seize control of any and all territory that a full tank of fuel would allow, using it as leverage for a wide range of concessions and demands Moscow wanted. The Berlin Wall was, in part, a spite fence punctuating the wrap-up of the event and the Cuban Missile Crisis the next year was a final test of nuclear brinksmanship. Especially the short range tactical nukes already in place and under purely local control to respond independently to any action against them (a detail not know to the US until way after the fact in the '90s) Jeez, doesn't anyone learn or remember history anymore?

Is there any info about this out there?

Don't know how much has been written then edited out over the years. It is a bit like the history of the 19th C. Land Cruisers, after they went out of fashion at the turn of the century, it was as though they never existed and the smaller scale tanks of WWI were created as though in a technical vaccum. Worse is the fate of the autonomous robot "Boilerplate" who was prominent in popular culture before WWI, but disappeared from public consciousness as he did in fact in an action in the war. At least in his case, there has been a tiny resurgence of interest, so there is current, though largely fictionalized, info on him, at least.

It's just that sort of thing..I don't know how it could slip through the cracks. o.o

Oh, it was "way back when."