Very cool. I plan to make a lamp out of an artillery shell and an M1 helmet (both from WW2). 

Love these New Service revolvers.  I have a M1909 and a M1917, and shoot them once every couple of years with light loads.

I think you go on better vacations than I do, I end up at beaches and resorts and mountains, and none of them have surplus stores or flea markets.  You got some nice examples of the fuels ration booklets, my kind of stuff.  Cheers Armygas

Haha, indeed it is. It was a Christmas gift many years ago from my mother, and I believe it’s a British “turtle” helmet, though I never saw any stamps inside the shell

Believe it or not, I e never seen “F Troop” haha. Thanks for the kind words, and I’ll definitely be posting more here in the near future. I do have two posts about Indian war haversacks and mess kits already in that section if you haven’t seen them. I think my next post will be about my 1872 campaign hat, perhaps. That’s probably the rarest item I own. 

Welcome to the forum! Quite the collection you have there. Not sure, but is that lampshade made out of a helmet?

Some very nice specimens and well displayed.  My knowledge of the Indian wars period extends as far as 'F' Troop enlightened me about six decades ago.  However I can appreciate the artifacts and the incorporation of the Rec room furnishings for a quite comfortable area for study and relaxation.  Again well done, I would be delighted to see more on this subject that I am rather short on.  Cheers, Armygas

Sorry, #46 is your blade, 1834 with a nail in it.     For #60 I don't have a pic of the date, just a repeat of the description.  It was on one of the Liveauctioneer auctions, I didn't record the auction house or the date.   The National Lancers-marked sabers are as you described with the MS marking on the quillon replaced with the rack number.  Scabbard #42 has saber #16.  Not sure what you mean by no inspector marks, #5 has an 1835 Dragoons-marked blade and has no federal inspection marks.                  

I never knew that, and that would explain your expertise! Thank you for your service! I guess I never thought of how many patches would be floating around and how many guys would be in such a unit. Yeah you hear rare a lot, and I admit I use it often. It seems generalized that anything that is remotely hard to find is automatically rare, but uncommon might be a better word. Yup, I'd love to have many things, but I won't have them all!

So I’ve posted before(mostly in the Indian wars section) but I do have U.S. militaria going up through Vietnam also. I plan on getting active in all areas of this forum, but Indian wars is definitely my biggest and favorite playground. Anyway, here’s some selected pics of my collection. There is some non U.S. militaria mixed in some of the images, so sorry about that lol