American WW2 RFX grenade marked, help?

[Discostu]

Hi all,

First of all I would like to apologize if this is in the wrong section, I was not sure if it should be in the U.S. Militaria or Ordinance section of the forums- please move if it is. I just picked this up and was wondering what you all thought- the grenade has "RFX" written on it as well as the number "3", was not sure what variant this was or if it was used during WW2. The grenade is inert and the bottom has a hole in it. Any help on identifying or value would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

[Infanteer]

It is a reproduction grenade with an incorrect fuse assembly used with the much more modern M67/M69 "baseball" grenades. Wartime grenade fuses were of a smaller diameter and will not fit the post war fuse body that you show here. Now, that being said, it is better quality than many of the reproductions being offered these days.

[Quest Master]

RFX = Richmond Foundry Co. Post WWII training grenade cast body.

[Svt40]

Original US training grenade.

They were very abundant in the mid to late 80's on the surplus market and have completely dried up. Now all you can find are the very poorly made Chinese copies which look nothing like the originals.

[Infanteer]

While I agree that there are original RFX marked practice grenades it's my understanding that the fuses used with the M69 practice grenades (M213) will not fit these originals as they have incompatible threaded portions. The M213 fuses are too big. At least that is the case with my original RFX marked example which is fitted with a M205 practice fuse and has a smaller diameter threaded portion. There has been some debate and confusion surrounding these as apparently during the 80's a large quantity of reproduction grenades were made in the style of the MkII, M26 (lemon) and M69 (baseball) but all were threaded to fit the commonly available M213 fuse, which in the case of the MKII is incorrect. There are some very knowledgeable "experts" in the field of ordnance who explain this in greater detail than I can, or care too for that matter. For example: www.inert-ord.net is informative and this subject has also been discussed in depth on http://www.bocn.co.uk (British ordnance collector's network).