40mm Bofors Question

[Mats]

Rob

Let me first say that I don't own one and I never worked with the Bofors 40 mm on a professional basis, but I'm a member of historical association that operates two L/60. I have fired maybe a dozen blanks at various events.

The blanks we have used, have been official army issue blanks. They work just fine if you first operate the hand lever and then push the blank in the case discharge opening, and make sure that you hear the click when the rammer levers engages the rim of the case. These blanks does not generate nearly enough recoil to operate the gun, so you have to repeat the procedure with the hand lever for each shot.

As far as I understand, the blanks are made from ordinary used brass, filled with about 0.4 kg black powder, then topped up with saw dust and sealed with resin or something. I belive that the secret is that the mouth of the case is crimped to make the opening maybe 30 mm in diameter. When fired, the cases opens up, so we haven't been able to reuse them. But as our supply of blanks are drying up we now plan on start crimping the used blanks and reloading them.