Some friends of mine are WW2 reenactors, portraying British Paras. Among their gear is a Bren gun. One of them asked me about making some dummy rounds for display purposes.

I had some surplus rounds, with the correct bullet. I used the seating die to break the bullet loose by seating a hair deeper. A kinetic bullet puller easily removed the bullets. The powder got dumped in the yard. I fired the primers in an Enfield and left them in place so it was obvious they were inert. I drilled a 1/8" hole in one side of the case, again to show it is a dummy round.

After cleaning the cases I dropped a BB in each one, so they would rattle. Then I reseated the bullets and crimped them in place. One crimp is a little heavy (case lengths varied about 0.005" but I was too lazy to trim them) however I think they'll be fine for the purpose.

cleaned up well. Do you guys have quite strict laws on inert rounds over there?

great stuff...pity your actors dont go to such lengths to ensure dummy rounds are easily identified...

northdude wrote:

Do you guys have quite strict laws on inert rounds over there?

Not at all, in most places. I just wanted to be sure that it was obvious that it was a dummy, and not a blank or live round.

When I did Civil War "living histories" for the National Park Service, at Gettysburg, they were pretty strict. One guy about had a heart attack because I had a dummy round made out of a 1/2" wooden dowel wrapped in paper. He was afraid that it could be loaded over a blank charge. The next year I had another one, made out of a 1" dowel, that obviously couldn't fit in a 0.577 bore.

Elvis wrote:

great stuff...pity your actors dont go to such lengths to ensure dummy rounds are easily identified...

There were so many errors made in that incident. Everyone who handled that gun deserves to be punished.

I started Civil War reenacting in 1981. I couldn't count the safety inspections I went through, or made. Only one time I found a live round in a cartridge box. I sent the guy back to his vehicle to get rid of it, then inspected every cartridge in his box and had him empty his pockets before I let him continue. He wasn't malicious, just stupid.

Good job Punkin…there is no way they could be seen as anything other than dummy rounds.

great stuff,yip a live round in that sort of place would be terrible....good on you for sorting it out.

Nice work Mike