Earliest Bren CES 3" x 3" or so grease tin ....

[Peter Laidler]

Here is an example of, probably the most elusive, unknown and therefore probably the cheapest missing bits from the earliest Bren CES. It's the little 3" x 3" or so grease tin that sits in the little squared section at the bottom of and in the middle section of the chest. It's held down by a small rotating wooden chock. This lower wooden rotating chock seems to be missing on a lot of the boxes and I suspect that someone decreed that it was no longernecessary after a certain date.

How do I know that this is the tin.....? Well, truthfully, I don't! But there is certainly an identical tin shown in plan view in photos of the earliest trials chest and a similar grease tin was part of the Lewis kit and was in a box of old Bren odds and sods in the cellar at Warminster - and THIS grease tin fits perfectly in the recess AND is the grease type used on the return spring and on the piston post and plunger spring.

This particular tin is marked underneath THE NORTH LONDON TINWARE Co.Ltd. HOXTON and dated 1929 and if you look hard, you'll see a small WD arrow above a letter S above the word Hoxton. I suspect that there'll be others

So, if you see one of these tins at a car boot sale or junk shop or even on THAT auction site, get it while it's cheap. This is only the second that I have ever seen and the first was dated 1926

What we REALLY need now are some photos of the two BREN types of magazine loaders don't we KevG or Brtiplumb?

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