Finds and UXBs!

OK, thanks John. I have enlisted the help of some specialists and hope that they can ID it. It ought to be a 3 inch mortar bomb yet the body shape looks to be an earlier pattern

I will let you know.

Coca cola. Always worth a try with must corroded metals.

Try HP Brown sauce. Works well on old pennies. Soak it for an hour or so.

The case could be steel that was used as well as brass.

Not resorting to chemical corrosion removers, various common domestic substances can work quite well:

Mix up a paste of salt and lemon juice and apply that overnight

Crumple some aluminium file into a wad, dip it in vinegar and rub away at the case.

Cola and brown sauce are acidic and that's why they can work reasonably well

John, the Mortar shell is a 3 inch Base Ejection type as used with Illuminating (Flare). Would have looked like this:

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Thanks to BOCN forum member hangarman

PNK;124735 wrote:

This is the 20mm shell casing.

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It is scanned rather than photographed and is now appears to be brass, although it is very corroded with lots of little brass lumps on it. The stamp on the bottom reads "ST 1942 20mm".
Brown sauce and the well known cola drink made no difference despite long soaking. A household scouring pad (non-metal) did the trick on the stamped end but not at all easily or completely. I assume the case would have been 110mm long but look damaged at the open end and rather jagged.

Manufactured at ROF Steeton, 1942

During the Second World War Steeton had a large Munitions Factory and Testing Facility, near the station where the current Damart factory is located. It was the extension to the Munitions Testing Facility that led to the compulsory purchase of Steeton Cricket Club's Elm Field Ground, and the move to the current Ground at Summerhill. Interestingly the Munitions Factory is totally absent from the Ordnance Survey map of 1958. After the war the Munitions Factory became a HGV Testing Station before the arrival in the 1970s of Damart.
The Club had played at three grounds before the outbreak of the Second World War; the first of the grounds being the Shroggs Field (where the Shroggs house was later to stand, before being demolished in 1994); in 1877 it moved to a ground on the Harewood estate (nearer to Eastburn); and the second move in 1895 being to the Elm Field ground (below Pott Lane) which was used until 1943. The Club built a pavilion in 1904 at a cost of £180, and bought the Elm Field ground for £330 in 1925. The location of the Elm Field ground was where the present Currer Rise estate is now.
Heritage squad in battle for pillbox
From the Telegraph & Argus, first published Tuesday 3rd Nov 1998.
Heritage watchdogs want a rare wartime pillbox, once part of a munitions factory, preserved when the site becomes a housing estate.
West Yorkshire Archaeology Service would like to see the two-storey pillbox, which once housed troops on guard, to remain a feature of land earmarked by Bradford Council for housing in its Unitary Development Plan.
Planning chiefs are to consult villagers in Steeton about a blueprint for the site off Halsteads Way, part of which was a Royal Ordnance factory during the Second World War.
The area still has remnants of a cannon testing range - the pillbox and two single-storey watch posts.
A spokesman for the Archaeology Service said: "The pillbox is unique to the district and also rare nationally. We would like it retained, but if it is not possible, all the structures should be recorded."
The work would involve photographing the wartime buildings and producing drawings on a scale map before the development started.

(ref: keighleyhistory.proboards.com/thread/895...ance-factory-steeton )

ROF Steeton was an outstation of Woolwich Arsenal and, together with Radway Green in Cheshire, was devoted to the production of 20 mm and .5 in., calibre brass cartridge cases and projectiles. Production at Steeton was mainly concentrated on brass cartridge cases for 20 mm Oerlikon and Hispano Suiza ammunition for the armed forces and particularly the RAF.

Ref: www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/97/a8900697.shtml