a discussion of mess kits

[elandil]

durn yall....you done flung a craving...

I'm about to have to hit the sites and see if I can find a British mess kit set and the osprey/crusader setup.

[parafireboy]

Hey everyone. I'm not sure if this post fits into mess kits, but it's canteen-related, so I hope so. If not, mods please move to a appropriate location. I picked up an interesting piece of gear recently that I had never heard of. It's an arctic canteen, and was apparently issued from the early 1960's through the late 90's. It's double-walled with vacuum so the water doesn't freeze in cold temperatures. It also has a rubber lip on it to not only seal the stopper (which is designed to be used with heavy winter gloves / mittens), but keeps your lips from freezing to the metal. It arrived in it's original issue box, which is dated 5/1962, though the canteen itself has a date of 4/62. It didn't come with the cover, but I found an unissued one on eBay. I'm looking forward to giving it a try in the Montana winter!

Here's a link to some more information on the canteen for anyone interested.

http://olive-drab.com/od_soldiers_gear_ ... arctic.php

I checked eBay, and there are quite a few of them listed if anyone wants to pick one up.

Have a good weekend rationauts!

[housil]

Great find and catch, didn´t hear of it before either.

[rabidwolf]

Great find, especially with the original box.

[elandil]

I remember seeing arctic canteen cups on one of the sites I was looking thru and thinking it looked really weird. Now I understand why it looked like it did.

[Norton]

I enjoyed reading the history of this piece of equipment. You can see from the text it started with the old pre WW 1 M 1910 hook and canvas carrier so a troop could attach to his web belt. Then finishing up it's career with the Alice fasteners and nylon pouch. But I never ever saw this canteen until it was being sold on line and one in a surplus store. Interesting they went with the old pre-World War style and stayed with the older American Civil war or classic camping shape. It looks like a beefy tank of a canteen, that stopper is a monster

[rabidwolf]

Thielemann in Leppersdorf-Radeberg is an authentic company still doing leather products today:
http://www.thielemann-lederwaren.de/
He wrote on his homepage he found a company doing these repros so I guess that German company did them so they have their stamping in.
German Military equipment never had their manufactures real name and place marked in, they all had (over 9300) "codes" to avoid spying from 1940-1945. before they had the "s-code" starting with a "s" and a three digit number.
The code was three small letters and the year without the "19", like "scz40".

So the marking with the real name may look good to reenactors but isn´t authentic.

That is very interesting housil. Makes a lot of sense.

[Norton]

Interesting similarity to pre-world war 1 U.S. canteen and modern Artic canteen
1898

spanish war canteen uncovered.jpg

Modern Artic canteen

Artic canteen with cup.jpg

with canvas cover

Spanish war canteen 1898.jpg

modern Artic canteen with canvas cover

Artic canteen modern.JPG

[Petej]

I've always had cheap and simple mess kits.

My all time favorite has been the Coleman Mess kit. It may be thin, it may be light, but it's never done me wrong.

When I was digging out my camping gear this year, I had discovered that my beloved mess kit if yore was damaged beyond repair.

A rather large box had fallen on the box of camping equipment, taking out my mess kit, stove and lanterns.

I did find a suitable modern replacement though.





I've used many, many mess kits over they years, but I kept coming back to this simple. yet very basic kit.

[elandil]

Nice kit....is it aluminum or steel? Never seen one with ametal mug.