British kit questions

You will struggle to drill the shell as it is a hardened steel (requires heating to high temperature locally and drilling when red hot). Most of have taken the easy method of attaching the strap to the liner rim instead. Doesn't look any different when using a net and doesn't require butchering a shell.

Aha, I thought it was just that my drill bits were too cheap

No, I ruined a few good drill bits trying....

Yes, you don't want to try and drill one of those.

Cheers
Martin

Got it sorted, the liner pretty much clips into place below the existing chin strap mounting points. Gave the shell a new coat of paint using some olive drab enamel I had lying around. The new paint does make the dent in the front more noticable (looks like someone braked too hard ). Won't show under scrim etc. and it adds a bit of character. The smell of leather when you put it on is amazing

Tried scrubbing my webbing to get an unblanco'd look. Each bit is now a different shade of green. Some bits may just need another go, but some seem to have been dyed before I got them. Should I try bleach or just get some natural webbing coloured blanco?

Don't use bleach! Scrubbed webbing will be various shades of white - if you want a just raw webbing colour, and a uniform shade, then you need to blanco in the khaki colour. (First removing as much of the previous blanco first, as you have already done.)

[link]http://www.blancoandbull.com/how-to-remove-blanco-from-webbing/[/link]

Or you could pretend you were in the B.E.F and your pea green wont wash off properly

Or you could pretend you were in the B.E.F and your pea green wont wash off properly

That might work, except what I'm going for is more the 'I'm in the A.I.F. and have never used blanco' look
I guess the only way to achieve it is going to be to blanco everything in either 'sand' or 'natural webbing' blanco from SOF.

My British airborne kit is P37 battle dress badged up as 2nd Battalion Oxford and Bucks LI (green backing to the cap badge on the red beret) normal boots, NOT Para boots, with gaiters, webbing belt and that's it! I carry a Sten

I guess the only way to achieve it is going to be to blanco everything in either 'sand' or 'natural webbing' blanco from SOF.

I just have a set of unblancoed webbing for use in Italy/desert type settings. I'm certainly not going to scrub the blanco off it. The small pack is one of those SOF repros as things as decent original unblancoed small packs are as rare as hens teeth these days. It isn't bad although the material is a bit wierd compared to original stuff.

McV will now no doubt find a crate full of unissued small packs at a car boot sale...

Cheers
Martin

McV will now no doubt find a crate full of unissued small packs at a car boot sale...

Hehe, no, but I did keep banging on about W S Supplies having unissed dated ones for £7 for ages, and only 2 people took me up on the offer...

I do have a nice little stash of unissued or lightly used unblanco'd small packs which I'd be happy to lend a few of the lightly-used ones out at games?

What sort of buttons would british greatcoats have? Is there a special kind/name? Ebays WW2 button selection is quite large

In terms of the greatcoat, you'd best advised to purchase General Service brass buttons. Such as these:

Large buttons, 24mm in diameter. If I remember correctly, they also made regiment specific buttons too, since my greatcoat is buttoned with Royal Marine ones, as for the shoulders, you'll need a smaller variant.

The green plastic ones are less work and better camo....

The green plastic ones are less work and better camo....

There's more than just the delicious brass!?

My plan was to switch to 2 sets of webbing, blanco'd for British and unblanco'd for Aussie. I would then use my small pack for British and my large pack for Aussie. The cheapest way to get a 2nd set of webbing seemed to be the sets of green webbing from Epicmilitaria.com so my best bet was to deblanco my current webbing. This has the bonus of making my British gear a complete separate set, which may be handy now I have some other guys from Bristol planning to join us.
The next part of my plan is then to alter a 5x30 round thompson pouch to make an Aussie Owen gun pouch in place of the left ammo pouch. I may possibly add a couple of extra pouches to the sides of the large pack and put a Red Ensign in one of them. My thinking is that if I carry a large pack, I will want to dump it at the respawn point so why not use it as the respawn point and for a change have the correct flag for commonwealth troops to respawn at. It will also make it less confusing when there is more than one British squad.

The green plastic ones are less work and better camo....

There's more than just the delicious brass!?

There's a batch of the plastic ones on Ebay. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/11-WW2-Genera ... 2a48be56e6

Were the plastic ones as common (or more) then?

Yes, they were pretty common from '43 onwards. They were introduced as an economy issue to save valuable brass which could instead be used for bullet and shell cases.