25 pounder wood seat

[Mike Cecil]

I suspect different places, different timber. Pine was not common in Australia before WW2, whereas the local native species were available and abundant. The stocks on .303 rifles made in Australia used, from memory, any of three different native species rather than Walnut.

Aust production was most probably a native hardwood, while in Canada, other species like pine or spruce or maple were probably the most available?

Mike

[Tony Smith]

Originally Posted by Mike Cecil

I suspect different places, different timber. Pine was not common in Australia before WW2, whereas the local native species were available and abundant. The stocks on .303 rifles made in Australia used, from memory, any of three different native species rather than Walnut.

Mike

Lithgow-made .303s used a total of 9 species of timber, 1 was NZ Birch, the other 8 were Native Australian species; NO British or indeed any Northern Hemisphere timber species were used at Lithgow.

I wood think that any timber used in Australian-made 25Pdrs or vehicle bodies would also be exclusively native species.

[Tony Smith]

More timbers:

[Mike Cecil]

Thanks Tony, nine it is.

My reference to Walnut was, of course, to the northern hemisphere species ( Juglans sp.), not Qld walnut (Endiandra palmerstonii).

Like the Canadians, the Australian-manufactured 25-pdr adapted local resources and manufacturing techniques to suit. While most parts were interchangeable, differences did lead to logistics difficulties in the supply of spare parts in some cases. For example, the packings within the Australian buffer & recuperator were different to British production, and not interchangeable.

There are a small number of timber items on or included with a 25-pdr (seat, line mounting block, rammer, oil-can mounting block, parts and tools boxes) but I've not seen specifications which included the type of timber to be used in manufacture.

Mike

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Mike Cecil

I suspect different places, different timber. Pine was not common in Australia before WW2, whereas the local native species were available and abundant. The stocks on .303 rifles made in Australia used, from memory, any of three different native species rather than Walnut.

Aust production was most probably a native hardwood, while in Canada, other species like pine or spruce or maple were probably the most available?

Indeed local sources were used where possible. See the attached table from the EMER which specifies the "timbers for vehicle bodywork and other uses": the hard woods available in United Kingdom differed from those in Persia & Iraq, for example.

Screenshot_2021-01-26 EMERWood03 webp (WEBP-afbeelding, 583 × 800 pixels) - Geschaald (93%).jpg