Over the years a number of canvas buckets, of various periods, have come up on the blog. One thing they have all had in common however is that they have been from World War Two or earlier. Up until recently I had always assumed that the design was dropped immediately after the Second World War and replaced with plastic or something similar. However tonight’s object shows that I was wrong, and the canvas bucket was still going strong into the 1970s. This bucket looks very similar to examples we have already seen, being made of a heavy duty jute type hessian cloth:
The top handle is made of a piece of rope:
What is interesting, however, is that it has an NSN number and a date of 1976 marked on the base in black ink:
These markings are very clear and well stencilled, in contrast to the inspector’s ownership stamp of ‘/|\013’ that is far fainter:
The canvas bucket remained a useful bit of kit:
On both the ARRV & WR Repair it was used as a washing bowl. Folded up to nought, didn’t split like a plastic washbowl so was a useful bit of kit. Had to be a relatively new one though, couldn’t use the one from the ARRV/ARV davit as that held the winch & chains & was full of oil & grease.
Looking up the NSN number I find that the official designation for this is ‘buckets, water, canvas, Mk.5’ and that it is still listed in stores catalogues so there must still be a need for the venerable old canvas bucket in today’s army!
