It's the powder horn Gramp used to use with his flintlock rifle. The hole in that wooden thing is sized for the charge of powder appropriate to that rifle.

The horn still has powder in it, which makes Dad nervous. Old black powder isn't particularly dangerous (I mean, it's not expired dynamite), but I can see that. There are more shelf-stable modern substitutes available nowadays. He doesn't believe me when I tell him we could just dump it out in the driveway and light it if he wants to get rid of it, though. Shame, I want to try laying a trail with it and see if that really works like in the cartoons. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

You ask it, the Mythbusters proved it.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

I think it's an M14 magazine. As I've mentioned before, Gramp was a member of the U.S. Army Reserve competitive rifle team in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Army rifle competition changed from the M1 rifle to the M14 in 1963, so he would have been active during the M14 era, but I don't know why he would have had a magazine from one in with his reloading supplies. Maybe it was his "lucky mag" or something. We'll never know.

I didn't get pictures, but we also found a few boxes of official match-grade .30-'06 ammunition in one of his several ammo crates, dated 1962--the last year they used that cartridge in competition, since the M14s they started using in '63 were in 7.62×51mm NATO.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.