Original French WWI F1 Hand Grenade with Wooden Top Screw Plug – Inert Original Items

Original Item: Only One Available. This is totally inert BATF compliant genuine World War One French F1 Grenade with a very rare original wooden top screw plug. For safety reasons, the fuses were not installed in the grenades until they were issued for front line use. The plug extends far down into the grenade to ensure that the explosive charge does not move to impede the fuse when it is installed. The wooden top plugs were discarded once used, and as they are wood, very few remain.

This example is in great shape, with a lovely aged patina. The wooden screw plug still has the original leather sealing washer, and unscrews correctly. There is also a very nice A R E maker mark on the side of the grenade.

Ready to display!

The F-1 grenade is a hand grenade mass-produced by France during and after WW1, used en masse in the majority of European countries throughout the First World War and Second World War.

The F-1 grenade was first put into mass production by the French State in 1915 during the First World War. In May 1915 the first of the F1 grenades (fusante No. 1) appeared in the French military, in limited quantities. This new weapon inherited from the experience of the first months of the war: the shape was made to be more modern, with an external grooves pattern for better grip and easier fragmentation. The second expectation proved deceptive, since the explosion in practice gave no more than 10 fragments (although the pattern was designed to split into all the 38 drawn divisions). The design was proved to be very functional, especially due to its stability compared to other grenades of the same period. Later, the Fusante No. 1 was used en masse by many foreign armies in the period 1915–1940. The F-1 grenade has been used as a basis for the development of many other grenades by different nations, including the US and the Soviet Union.

The F-1 was very widespread during the first half of the 20th century, used by armies of France, United States, Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, Finland, and others. Overall more than sixty million of these grenades were produced over 25 years, from 1915 to 1940.

Development
Originally, the F1 was designed to use a lighter-based ignition system, but later it began using a percussion cap fuse. Designs such as the M1916 and M1917 Billant fuses turned the F1 into a time-fused grenade, which was the grenade’s final ignition system. By World War II, the F1 used the M1935 fuse, which is a time-based fuse, but it differs from the M1916 Billant fuse internally. The F-1 in its original design was withdrawn from French military service in 1946. The altered models of the grenade remain in military service in countries around the world, among others in the Russian F1 Grenade and American Mk 2 grenade.