Need help identifying an old box

[MLB10]

was hoping one of you could help since there are a lot of firearms lovers here.  This is an old box my mother kept embroidery floss in.  There are no words/markings.  It's dovetailed (looks like machine to me) and the hinge and clasp thing are iron, I thin...very cold to the touch and feels like my cast iron skillets.  If it is an ammo box I'd love to pinpoint how old and what it held.  Not looking to sell , just wanting a history lesson.

[Chechem]

Looks like a typical shipping box, made of pine, but it has that weird handle.  Can you tell for certain that the handle was original?

[Coach Hank Crisp]

I have an old wooden box similiar to that one.

It held Hercules blasting caps from Hercules Powder Plant. It is stamped with the name though.

Hercules used Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) as the blasting cap agent. It fires at over 35,000 feet per second when ignited. Bad stuff!

I had 2 of them and gave one to my sister for Christmas years ago.

HTH

[MLB10]

The handle thing is original because it matches the hinges and the wood of the lid is indented  to perfectly fit it  and it looks like it was done professionally and not just whittled.

[Chechem]

The handle thing is original because it matches the hinges and the wood of the lid is indented  to perfectly fit it  and it looks like it was done professionally and not just whittled.

I've never seen one, and I've seen a lot of military stuff, so I'm thinking it's not military (just a guess).  I know that similar (dovetailed pine) boxes were produced for everything shipped to dry-goods stores (nails, hammers, all sorts of heavy stuff), but the handle is the cool and unusual part of it.  As mentioned above, many of the boxes were marked with a manufacturer, especially if the items inside were valuable.  It appears to be a general-purpose box, despite the handle.

[Chechem]

Check this: Click here for link

[MLB10]

Check this: Click here for link

wow- thanks!  Why would they ruin a perfeclty cool box to make that crap???    Somebody added those "purse straps" after the fact.

[MLB10]

now i am gonna kick myself b/c i just saw a vintage pie carrier  that I thought was a freaking picnic basket...threw it away a fwe years ago after it got some damage.  they are asking $189 for it.  UGH

[SUPERCOACH]

Guys, I don't think that is a dovetail corner.  It looks like a standard box joint to me.  You can see the difference really well in this picture if you aren't familiar with carpentry techniques.  The corner on the left is a standard box joint, which is much easier to make because there aren't any angles involved.  The corner on the right is a dovetail.  The dovetail is a much stronger joint, but it is much harder to make and get a nice, tight fit because of the angles involved.

I have no idea what that means in terms of origin, but I would suspect it was mass produced.  I know the joinery, but I know nothing about antiques.

[XBAMA]

[Coach Hank Crisp]

^^^^^THIS^^^^

My box is very similar. Mine is wider and not as deep.

Also has a picture of the god Hercules stamped above the lettering.

Has #15-C  instead of #1-D stamped on side of it and not the end.


I worked at Hercules Powder Plant in McAdory Junction. I could have had hundreds of different style boxes because they had started using cardboard back then. I was off from the mines (strike) and went there to work until mines went back to work.

The dynamite mix building blew up on Halloween night in 1979 or 1980. I had been working around that building that afternoon. Never found the workers that was inside.

The dynamite mix building and the jelly mix buildings were small looking houses built in 1912. No electrical inside. Had windows with lights shining thru them and all machinery was driven by long drive shafts from outside motor rooms.

Had huge piles of dirt with timbers around buildings to force explosions up and protect other buildings. Buildings also had 2 feet of sand in ceiling rafters to keep explosions from other buildings from sending embers through them and causing more explosions.

That afternoon we had an electrical problem because the clocks in plant started running backwards. It was a 3 phase delta system and 600 VAC phase to phase instead of the 480 VAC phase to phase wye systems used everywhere else and now.

There also a slurry explosive plant. Slurry was an explosive used in mining packed in sausage looking tubes but was long and rolled up on reels like cable. The (PETN)  blasting cap plant was located away from the rest of the plant. Whole plant was stretched over miles. In the surrounding woods there were storage buildings for the finished dynamite. They were smaller wood buildings with sand in the ceilings of them as well.

They had a shooting pond. A large pond of water that they would detonate explosives underwater and test the products.

They had a narrow gauge rail system that had battery driven locos running between all buildings delivering the tubes and the mixing agents.

To make the nitroglycerin they had a huge nitric acid plant. They brought sulfuric acid in by railcar. That acid was turned into nitric acid in the plant. The nitric acid had to be in stainless steel containers and pipes because it would eat through regular carbon steel.

I had just gotten home and was sitting on the couch. I lived about 10 miles from plant and explosion broke windows in Hueytown and Bessemer. That explosion shook my house and I told my wife that was Hercules. Sure enough I got  call a few minutes later from plant supervisor. Went back out there and the woods was on fire and the plant had its 44,000 VAC power lines feeding plant were down from metal hitting cables. Block walls were knocked down in all surrounding buildings.

Jefferson county sent out bulldozers and cut fire lines to contain the woods fires. Workers were hiding in the woods. They went around with a bullhorn and told them it was safe to come out of hiding and report to main gates.

I have worked in some dangerous industrial plants but this one was by far the worst one ever. Made the mines look like a safe place to work.

Dow Corning bought the plant out after I went back to mines and wasn’t long before they closed it.

[MLB10]

was it just fireworks or was it dynamite used in demolition?  Seems an extra shame if people died over fireworks.

[Coach Hank Crisp]

was it just fireworks or was it dynamite used in demolition?  Seems an extra shame if people died over fireworks.

Dynamite used for mining and in the construction of roads, highways, dams, by blasting thru rock.

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