From the Archive - Renault FT Hotchkiss M1914 Turret – Fabricating the Casiers a’ munitions (Ammunition Stowage Bins) - Inside Track | Renault TSF Tank Kent

Another article requested from some of our members which deserves another airing. We have lived through years of indecision of what these bins should look like. We doubted original blue prints providing exact details of the bins until we had the double breakthrough provided by the series of high-resolution images and the detail provided by the original French manual describing Casiers a’ munitions in Reglement de manoeuvres des unites de chars legers Fascicule IV (texte) Titre VIII. We know what the bins look like thanks to the blueprints and confirmed by the images. Now for the challenge of fabricating the stowage bins. Previous experience in using blue prints exposed the gulf between the draftsman and the engineer. This series of drawings was no different. What made good sense to the draftsman 100 years ago did not work for the man in the assembly line. . The sections representing the back and front of each of the two bins were cut to scale and pre folded in readiness for assembly. We opted for separate rolled edging strips instead of rolling the entire panels. The small hangers to allow the bins to be mounted on the inside of the crew commander’s area were cut to scale and folded as required by the drawing. Each hanger, had a mirror slot and point cut into them as per the stowage bin drawing for mounting on the two wall brackets inside the Renault FT. The front facing panels of the stowage bins were folded to form the correct shape to provide the top, base and sides of the structure and to allow for the back to be fitted to complete the bin. We did not cut out the openings in the front facing panels until the top and bottom sections of the structure we completed replete with the edging strips. This provided strength in the structure, which would allow us to cut out the openings on the front face with minimal distortion in the material - which is only 1mm sheet. Each hole was cut individually and finished with the edging strip leaving more strength to allow for the next opening and so on. As the bins began to take shape it was interesting to note a few details that had begun to emerge. The first was the inset to the base of the bin. This appeared to allow for foot space for someone standing in the commander’s area to move freely around without catching their feet in the bottom of the bins. The other observation was just how small this structure is. Large enough though to accommodate 25 belts of 96 rounds on either side or a total of 2400 belted rounds per side in each stowage bin. A significant amount of stress relieving was required to remove the torque, which had built up in the structure in cutting the openings into the front followed by fitting the edging strips which had to be carefully welded in place. The stress relief was achieved by spot-heating each corner and then cooling the bin’s front face with a wet rag. Any evidence of a weld had to be removed to leave a very good impression of a period rolled edge. All that was now required after removal of the weld evidence was the riveting of the back panel to the now completed front.

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