Introduction:

An ammunition box is a container designed for safe transport and storage of ammunition. Most small arms ammunition is packed in watertight metal boxes. The boxes for .30 cal and .50 cal ammunition are the most common, but there are actually a large number of sizes and shapes of ammo cans to accommodate the vast variety of military cartridges and munitions. Some boxes are special purpose containers made for one item exclusively, while others are more general purpose and can be packed with inner cartons, bandoleers, linked belts, dividers, or loose cartridges of many types of calibers. Although there is a lot of variation, ammo cans are often marked by embossing or stencil to indicate the orientation of the ammo contents, the box nomenclature, the manufacturer and manufacturing lot numbers.

Review:

ANT Miniatures launched a new 1/35 scale product line in January 2015. The line includes modern weapon and accessory sets, manufactured in cooperation with SP Models using rapid prototyping technology. This review covers Cal.30 ammo boxes and cal.30 cartridges linked (35-709).

The set is packed in a hard cardboard box, with the pieces secured in a zip-lock bag and additionally protected by a bubble wrap. The CAD box art image displays the ammo boxes with ammo belts which are a part of this set. The box art image isn't completely conclusive, so check the photos added to this review to see the contents of this set.

The kit consists of 9 pieces: 6 ammo boxes and 3 ammo belts. The pieces are cast in grey resin and the cast is really good. The ammo belts are very delicate and a lot of care is needed to remove them from their large carrier block. Some of the delicate cartridge tips broke off during transport.

The ammo boxes in this kit represent 7.62mm ammo boxes usually attached to M240H on various helicopter mount setups. However, I could not identify the boxes, get their dimensions or anything that could help me provide more detail to this review. If anyone out there knows the correct designation of these ammo boxes, please let me know. I did find several photos of the boxes in use and, as far as I can tell, these miniature renditions are nicely detailed and really well delivered in scale.

The ammo belts look good with the details visible under high magnification; both the ammo rounds and belt links are designed well and impressively transferred to resin. The belts can be trimmed to fit, but can also be bent or twisted using hot water. Caution and a lot of patience is necessary to get optimal results, but the extra work is well worth it as these resin belts provide a much more realistic appearance than their flat PE counterparts.

Conclusion:

Cal .30 ammo boxes and cal .30 cartridges linked (35-709) from ANT Miniatures includes six 7.62mm ammo boxes and three long segments of 7.62mm ammo belts in 1/35 scale. The resin pieces are nicely cast, but several fine cartridge tips broke off in transport and should be repaired. The details look good and are impressively delivered in scale.

I couldn’t find much information on these particular ammo boxes other than their use with M240Hs. So, I can recommend displaying the boxes with this weapon, either on the ground or in the ammo can holder on the left side of the weapon helicopter mount.

Thanks to Viktor Antonov from ANT Miniatures for this review sample.