Two Gun Barrels

The last two seasons searching the battlefields in Kurland we ve found lots of interesting bits of metal. and a few of these bits I was lucky enough to bring back home to the coffeetable.
Last summer we were in Priekule searching some heavy fought over positions and the ground there was full of shrapnel of all sorts. I dug a large piece which looked like the usual artillery shrapnel, and I happen to collect large bits of shrapnel too, but when I turned the piece over I notice rifling going along it and understood it came from a gun barrel. Probably a PaK cannon as the metal isnt`t very thick. I ve cleaned the part with electrolysis and covered it in wax and it is now residing on one of my shelves.

We also found bits of different shells and one seemed to fit the barrel nicely:

On one of the trips I made to Kurland in 2015 we found ourselves searching a small patch of forest close to a farmers road. That day I had no luck finding anything, but one of the other diggers found several pieces of a blown up Panzer. The explosion had to have been massive as the thick armored sides of the tank had been ripped to small pieces, and its ammo had been thrown out over the forest. One of the pieces he dug out was a chunk of its barrel, just some 30 cm of it and some meters away we found a pit full of different 75mm shells,most of them damaged from the blast and one was perfectly cut in half. The digger gave both these bits to me and later I managed to bring the very heavy bits back home.
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​Usually I never restore or meddle with relics other than cleaning and preserving them, but I felt this German 75mm Panzer barrel and shell deserved to be something more than just some rusted items. I got the idea from some pics I saw from a Polish museum. I removed the wax covering and treated the parts with rustkiller before I primed and painted them and when the paint had dried I gave it all a coating of clear matt laquer.
Hope you like the result:)