Let's do cannons #3

This dude is a (relatively) recent purchase - it's a signed and numbered brass naval cannon from Cannon-Mania. This was their millennium offer (for the year 2000 - not, technically, the millennium). It's a nice desk piece in .30 caliber - fully functional but more of a collector's piece.

By the way - .30 caliber is a common military caliber - .308, 30-06, etc. The best field-expedient measure to approximate a .30 caliber hole (in, say, a gun barrel or a roadside sign) is the diameter of a standard U.S. cigarette. If a cigarette just fits in a bullet hole, you've got a .30 caliber hole. Here's hoping this information is useful to you someday...

It's fish knife Friday #4

Bone handle - squid form...

Let's do cannons #2

Here's a little guy...


...patterned loosely after a Civil War field cannon. The barrel is fixed (elevation) and cast iron, so if I were to ever discharge it (I won't), I'd just use a tiny charge and a bit of wadding - no projectile. The bore is about .25 inches.

Imagine the day when toys required a black powder charge to be any fun - now a friggin' basketball comes with a "choking hazard" warning. No wonder today's youth are catatonic goth turds...

Let's do cannons #1

I figured I might as well get all of my cannons out of they way. Most are little, and could even be considered toys. However, I collect cannons using specific criteria:

First, they must all use black powder. I am not interested in carbide cannons or non-functional pieces.

Second, I don't care if they are little, but they must be able to fire a powder charge (at a minimum) or a genuine projectile - even if it's a small one.

I've included a standard U.S. penny in each cannon photo for scale. You've already seen this and this, so consider these part of the collection.


This dude is a .22 caliber bronze black powder cannon of a naval gun design. If you ever want to fire broadsides from your Sunfish, this piece is for you. You might even disable an Optimist, if you play the wind right and drill your gunners until they hate you.

Of course, on a Sunfish, you probably are the gunner, so keep shooting this little peanut until you hate yourself...

BELGIUM is not a dirty word...

...except in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


By all accounts, this old percussion pistol is from Belgium, although I can't find a mark one on it. It's similar in style to a lot of pistols of the period (c. 1840's). Like another piece I recently posted, it was probably for sea service based on the (swiveling) iron ring on the buttcap. It's .75 caliber, so it packed a real punch.

I invite you to compare it to a very similar, but slightly earlier piece here.

Monster cable knife

No...not these ridiculous things...

A monster cable knife!
This big Bowie-style knife was made by a Maryland blacksmith a few years back. I've since lost/forgotten his name, but I think he hailed from Havre De Grace. This knife was his first attempt at bladesmithing. I impulse bought it at the Delaware Harvest Moon Festival at Ashland Nature Center. I'd love to know the blacksmith's name, so if anyone ever sees a blacksmith at the aforementioned festival whose touch mark is a tiny fish, drop me a line with his info.

Anyway, the knife is especially cool becasue it is made from a length of 1" diameter steel cable. The smith created the blade by forging the intertwined wires into a Damascus style blade. The patterning is still visible on the blade. The overall length is about 12".

This knive also comes with a story. Shortly after I bought it, a young missy that worked with my wife came around hawing Cutco kitchen knives (a set of which I bought and have been very happy with for over 8 years). As part of her Cutco demonstration, missy whipped out a piece of leather (like belt material) and challenged me to bring out the sharpest knife in the house. Expecting me to go to the kitchen, she looked at me a little funny when I went to the armory. When I came back with this knife, the wife knew what was coming. I promptly julianned her leather swatch into tiny little 1/8" strips, leaving little missy somewhat stunned.

When it came to the tomato test, however, I was not as competitive, so I bought the set, primarily for this whippy little number. This'll cut tomato so thin you can read a book through the slices, and then turn around and smear a molecule-thin layer of mayonaise on some toasted rye, which the monster cable knife could never do.

Mmmmm....sandwich.

I'm now obligated..

..to follow yesterday's junk with the crown jewel of my collection.


This piece is (or at least could have been) a pirate's pistol. Demonstrably.

It's an old flintlock that was definitely designed for sea service. How do I know this? Two reasons...

First, the brass barrel and fittings tell me so. You see, brass is much more resistant to the ravages of corrosion that the salty ocean inflicts on iron and steel. If you want a gun to last at sea, you use as little iron as possible.

Second, another pistol almost identical to this one, was excavated from a real 1717 pirate shipwreck. No shit.

To read up on the find, I highly recommend reading Barry Clifford's excellent book "Expedition Whydah". I've excerpted a page here without permission from the publisher (I claim "fair use" for the purposes of academic study, but I will gladly take down the image if anyone takes exception).

The similarities are such that these pieces are not only from the same period, they may have been made by the same maker. If that doesn't send a shiver down your spine, you just don't get it.

Clifford's find is a bit more elaborate, and appears to have had an iron barrel. Otherwise, the pieces are virtually identical - the escutcheons with the heart motif, the trigger guard, and the brass furniture opposite the lock. But notice the face from the buttcap of Clifford's piece next to a photo of the buttcap from mine:

The faces differ to be sure, but look at the eyes, the forehead, and especially the scalloped border around the face. It's as if the benign face of the Sun King on Clifford's find has become totally enraged on mine. These works or art could have easily been made by the same hand. (insert more spine chills here).

If you do not yet feel the power of history, you are totally lost here. I got a tear in my eye just seeing these images together...