Home decor store renovation turns up 400 anti-tank mine crates (VIDEO)

By Chris Eger

An Idaho pottery shop uncovered stacks of wooden WWII-era ordnance crates while renovating a new location.
As reported in the above video from KTVB, Colby Patchin with Boise Pottery ended up with a bunch of recycled building materials in the form of 400 empty anti-tank mine shipping crates after demolishing the old Garden City Furniture location in town.
“I got a text from my contractor saying ‘Look what we found inside your building when we were doing the demo,’” Patchin said.
The crates, for M1A1 mines, were produced at the Elwood Ordnance Plant in Joliet, Illinois over a three-month period in 1943.

While Patchin says there were no mines or fuzes inside the boxes, he did find vintage instructions for their use. Designed to carry a 6-pound explosive charge, each M1A1 was capable of knocking the tread off a tank or demolishing a light-skinned vehicle such as a truck.
According to the USDA Forest Service, during the war the Elwood plant was considered among the “largest, most sophisticated munitions plants in the world,” and loaded, “over 926 million bombs, shells, mines, detonators, fuzes, and boosters,” during the conflict.
While some of the crates were rotted or had been used by critters over the years, Patchin says

Source: Guns.com