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Den1
February 14th, 2007, 10:17 PM
Hello from NZ - never posted before and thought I'd use your collective wisdom as I can't find what I want in any search engine.

I'd like to know the shelf life of grenades - how long before they lose their effectiveness or become too dangerous to handle?

I'm interested in shelf lives for stun; fragmentation; percussive; concussive and smoke.

Can anyone help or direct me to a decent research source? Much appreciated. (If there's a better place to post this please let me know.)

Shalashaska
February 14th, 2007, 11:47 PM
Lots of different grenades use lots of different explosives and lots of different ignition systems. For an answer, you'd have to select a specific grenade (M67, MkIIA1, Stielhandgranate (potato masher :D)
You'd probably also have to specify the country it was made in, since a lot of munitions are labelled the same, but one is made in an American factory, while the other was made by a 9 year old in Liberia.

Den1
February 15th, 2007, 12:08 AM
Okay - really what I'm looking for is a ballpark rather than total accuracy. Looking for a rough idea on higher quality manufactured granades (say US Army stock) - are we talking decades plus here or much less? - And thanks for replying. :-)

Shalashaska
February 15th, 2007, 12:28 AM
All I can tell you is that from an episode of Mail Call about 3 years ago, most fragmentation grenades have an operational life of about 10 years. But I don't see why you'd want to know since you'll probably never get your hands on one unless your grandpa held on to one for the last 62 years.

nbk2000
February 15th, 2007, 12:43 AM
There's a difference between operational lifespan, and functional lifespan.

There are devices that were made in WW1 that'll still work today if they were kept well, but that's not something you want to rely upon with your life. That's functional lifespan.

Operational lifespan is how long the device can be depended upon to function, first time-every time, without functioning from unintentional actions, like dropping it or bouncing around in the back of an APC.

So, for modern grenades, functional lifespan could be a century or more, but operational would be only a decade or two.

TreverSlyFox
February 15th, 2007, 01:09 AM
Many of the grenades I used in 1966-70 were WWII and Korea vintage. The oldest I can remember was from 1944.

Den1
February 15th, 2007, 01:10 AM
Thanks nbk2000. That's really helpful.

More please! When you say 'kept well' - how would you keep a grenade so as to maximise its life? What storage conditions would you recommend? And, hypothetically, if optimum storage conditions were utilised could the functional lifespan be extended past a couple of decades?

c.Tech
February 15th, 2007, 01:37 AM
I would say the best way to store anything is in a cool, dark, dry place. Keep out of direct sunlight.

ShadowMyGeekSpace
February 15th, 2007, 02:18 AM
I'd say it primarily depends on the fuse mechanism used... is the explosive used in the triggering mechanism stable, or does it degrade over time? What about the actual charge of the grenade itself? It's impossible to say whether or not something is safe to handle, or can operate without details.

Den1
February 15th, 2007, 02:32 AM
Good points all.

Okay. Let's approach this from another direction. As I know very little about explosives and armaments of any kind . . .

If I wanted grenades to last a really really long time (say 50-100 years or more if possible)

a) Which ones should I choose?
b) How should I store them?
c) Could I store a whole range - eg percussion; stun; concussion; fragmentation; smoke?

Thanks for bearing with me - I'm a writer and I want to get my facts right as I hate reading stuff that has been poorly researched. If it isn't possible to store grenades for that long (using today's technology - that is from here on going forward) then I'll re-think.

Reading the introductory notes I realise that I can contribute little to this forum and I am using your collected wisdom - so I'd just like to say again - I really appreciate it.

atlas#11
February 15th, 2007, 01:30 PM
*Most* of the military hand grenades I've cared to research used a mix of RDX and TNT or one or the other, which theoretically should be safe for quite a while if kept well. Filler explosives are probably not your biggest concern.

The detonator and triggering mechanism would be something I would remove from a grenade before storing it longer than several months. Military EOD do so, as for smoke grenades, I'd probably do the same. Concussion is basically the same as a fragmentation grenade its just more filler and less casing.

If you were going to rely on these, I would probably use American munitions, though Russian stock seems to be working well in Iraq. If it is a matter of obtaining them then the geographical location would be a major factor in what is available.