Ammo Can

[Big Frank]

One of the few personal things I had in Germany that made it home to me, besides my big @$$ 105mm brass ashtray, was a .50 cal. ammo can. I painted it gloss black while on call 24/7, on a 45-68 day straight tank gunnery support at Grafenburg. On one side I have a sticker of an eagle that said ZUNDAPP below it, but I cut that part off. Zundapp was a German motorcycle company founded in 1917. The sticker is one of the things I got with the tickets I won at the carnival during German-American Friendship Week at Storck Barracks/Illesheim Kaserne about 41 years ago. The bumper sticker on the other side is from Claire's Klosterstube. Or Close To Stupid as Sarge and I used to call it. We were always close to stupid, if not well beyond it, by the time we got back to the barracks from there. Klosterstube translates into English as monastery room, so I think the building used to be a cloister. The image on the sticker would seem to support that. I can't find any Zundapp logos with an eagle except this Badgeboy patch. Claire was a wonderful frau who owned a few different bars and really cared for her American boys. Besides Claire's Klosterstube, she had a place called Die Quelle I used to go most of the time, and Claire's Pub. It looks like Die Quelle translates as The Source. The source of what? I don't know, but it was a source of entertainment. They had music videos playing on a TV behind the bar. That's the first place I saw a lot of of music videos. Like when me and Sarge saw Culture Club's Do You really Want To Hurt Me? We couldn't figure out if it was an ugly woman or a guy in a dress. We just knew, as drunk as we were we still wouldn't f*** it!   Sometimes I here a pop as the pressure on the outside of the ammo can is too low or too high for the pressure on the inside, and the metal buckles. It's kind of weird to here that in my bedroom in the middle of the night.

https://www.7atc.army.mil/GTA/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCndapp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storck_Barracks

[Big Frank]

I have stickers on every side of the ammo can except the bottom. It's been a long time since the NRA had the Proud, Strong, United campaign. And I think it was even longer ago that I got the hunter orange NRA stickers. I believe the Frank The Tank label was made with a label maker my platoon sergeant had in Germany. That was a nickname I usd back then. And I can't think of a more perfect place for the Viridian Weapon Tech sticker than around the hole in the latch. Where the sticker is too wide, then narrows down to fit on the bottom of the latch, it almost looks like it was sized to fit there. You can fit a lot of 5.56mm NATO ammo in a .50 cal. ammo can, especially if it's in 30-round boxes the way the Israelis pack it, with no divider inside the box. They're about the same size as most 20-round cardboard boxes.

P.S. If you have any old cassette tapes, .30-cal. ammo cans are good for carrying them. I don't have any to get the measurements off of, but compact cassettes fit the narrow width just about perfectly IIRC.

[PegLeg45]

I have several old ammo cans that still POP like that occasionally. When I first got married, it scared the crap out of the wife when it did it. 

[Big Frank]

I should probably open the ammo can a few times a year whether I use it or not. Maybe burp it like Tupperware once each season when the temperature changes.   I thought I didn't have any .30 caliber ammo cans, then I remembered the one in the car with my tow chain in it. It just barely fits in there, and I lave to lay it back and forth when I put it in. Some of the jeeps we had in the army had 20mm ammo cans between the front seats like a center console. Those things are huge and have diagonal reinforcing ribs on the sides. I had .50 cal. cans U-bolted to the rear racks of several of my ATVs, with a hasp welded on and the hole in the latch enlarged for it, so I could slap a padlock on. The nuts on the U-bolts were inside the can, usually with a metal plate instead of washers, and covered with black RTV silicone. Ammo cans aren't just for ammo.

When I was in Germany and we went to the field for tank gunnery support, I took a wooden ammo crate like one of these full of pogey bait. (US, military, slang: Snacks, candy, and similar food items that are not generally available to soldiers in the field.) Pogue is American pejorative military slang for non-infantry MOS (military occupational specialty) staff, and other rear-echelon or support units. Also spelled POG - for People Other than Grunts. Sometimes we were called REMFs - Rear Echelon Mother F***ers, usually by DATs, Dumb Ass Tankers. I didn't care what anyone called me, as long as they didn't call me late for dinner. But if they did, I could fit a lot of ramen, jerky, chips, and other stuff in my ammo crate.   I know I mentioned it before, but our mess sergeant gave us loaves of bread and cases of shelf-stable UHT milk. IIRC it was 24 200ml cartons with straws attached like juice boxes, but before I eer heard of juice boxes. The milk didn't need to be refrigerated, but if you kept it in a fridge it would last 10 years. In the winter we threw a case on top of one of the trucks and took a carton out to thaw whenever we wanted. If I wanted toast, I tossed a slice of bread on top of the tent stove. There's nothing like that good old diesel flavor to give a man an appetite.   The bread, milk, and pogey bait supplemented the C-rations and army chow we had every day and made life more bearable. The treated wooden crates were poisonous but no one cared. We didn't eat the wood.

[TAB]

Cost co has these for $20. 4 small cans in a tray.  They have gaskets and claim to be water proof.   I have about 10 sets of them

[Sponsor]

[PegLeg45]

I switched to using the plastic ones also. I store ammo by caliber and stack the cans in a safe that is dedicated to ammo only.

[Tyler Durden]

My name is Tyler, and I’m a metal ammo can addict.

That and chrome wire metal shelving.

Wellllll….I do have two WrightLine media cabinets that were military surplus/DRMO.  They have a roll up style or tambour style door in the front.  I reload my own ammo, so let’s just say I have a lot of accoutrements and reloading related paraphernalia.   The first media cabinet I bought had a lot of “shelves”.  They are more like drawers.  They pull out.  So they hold a lot of ammo cans full of brass and bullets.  The second one only had two drawers, so I took those out.  I made my own wooden shelf standards, and added plywood shelves.  Again loaded down with more ammo cans.  I have a label maker so that is how I am able to keep track of everything.

[Rastus]

Well, admission is the first step Tyler.  Good on you.

The next step is to get rid of all that pesky stuff, put it out of your iife to recover further.

I'll pay 1/2 the shipping for you to send it to Arkansas...if your addiction was really bad I may just drive up with my truck and trailer and haul it off for you.

[alfsauve]

I have two of the large Husky 6’ tall cabinets. One specifically for ammo the other for reloading supplies and shooting accessories.  Both of which I inserted wooden  vertical supports on each side and in the middle.  I far exceed the per shelf weight rating.  I still have a lot of ammo in bags, but for my “everyday” competition I went to boxes.  Neater and easier to label and track.  The only ammo cans I have are used as paper weights to hold the target papers on top of the cabinets.

[TAB]

I switched to using the plastic ones also. I store ammo by caliber and stack the cans in a safe that is dedicated to ammo only.

I needed the safe space, do now I just stack it in my home office.  Not even sure how much is there to be honest.   I have not bought ammo in at least 2 years.   Been mainly shooting my reloads for the past 5 years.