Diffusing a Situation

Something interesting is always going on at Masterpiece Models. A few weeks ago, our intern showed up with this shell, which he had gotten from his father.

Most of us here are big history and military buffs – so we know a thing or two about ammunition. For instance, the brown paint marks this 20mm shell as an armor piercing explosive round. John Geigle took a look at it and noticed it had no primer to set it off, but it could have been designed for an electric trigger. John gave it a shake, and it rattled.

That’s when we got worried.

There’s a long and sad history of people who have kept live ammunition as a mementos of military service, and unsuspecting people have been hurt or killed when they unexpectedly go off.

John called the Clark County sheriff to come inspect the shell. Like most of us, he thought it was a cool souvenir, but he didn’t know whether or not it was dangerous.

That’s when we called the bomb squad.

The sheriff has a friend, Steve Collins, on the Portland Police Bomb Squad, who was kind enough to come give us his opinion. But even this expert couldn’t give us a definitive answer as to whether this shell was a danger. Of course, we would never keep something dangerous in the shop, but at this point most of us would have been sad to see the shell go.

Fortunately, Steve has a friend at the local Army Ordinance Center, who he called to run the serial number of the shell. In just a few minutes, he was able to confirm that the bullet was made as a dummy for display purposes and was no danger.

All in all, it made for an exciting day. And to geeks like us, an amazing modeling feat that so many people could have been fooled by this harmless replica.