Speaking of NCO swords...

This is a U.S. Model 1840 NCO sword, as shown in Flayderman. There is no scabbard. The hilt and grips are brass. This is a U.S. Civil War piece that I acquired by purchase - I know nothing of its provenance, so there's not much else to say!

These old eyes...

...have nothing on these.

These binoculars are probably from the late 1800's. The brass, black-painted eyecups are stamped "MARCHAND Fabt PARIS. The left brass ocular tube is stamped "Day & Night" on the top and the right brass ocular tube is stamped "U S Signal Service" on the bottom. The main body is also brass, but covered in black leather.

Interestingly, the optics on this piece are quite good - image clarity is high even though magnification seems to be only 1.5 - 2x. It's sad (to me) that many examples of Victorian optics can now be had for a song at antique stores everywhere.

No doubt the "steam punk" crowd is slowly turning these devices into fashion accesories even as you read this.

They broke the mold...

With all the fun of this, and this, and even this, one has to wonder where all those little .36 inch balls come from.

Well this little handy is a .36 caliber bullet mold. It's designed to make .36 caliber balls out of melted lead - one round at a time. Certainly not a mass production device, but probably adequate for passing time around the campfire. You could make a couple of dozen rounds in an evening, provided a source of lead, a hot fire, and a melting pot.

The sprue would have been cut off with a pocket knife or file.

Now...if only you could make black powder...you'd have just about everything you'd need.

Let's do cannons #4

Here's another .30 caliber piece. The barrel is brass, and the carriage is cast iron. The problem is, while both are old, the barrel is not original to the carriage. Someone must have thought this combination worked, but it does not, as evidenced by the disparity at the trunnion.

However, the skewed aesthetics of the piece are not off-putting - I imagine the original counterparts were lost during antebellum play, so much may be forgiven...

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...

Here's an old relic...

Much like this old blogger, this piece has seen better days. It's most likely an Allen & Thurber center hammer pistol in .30 caliber, although any factory markings have long since rusted off. It's probably the little brother of "Double Trouble", and appears in my 7th edition Flayderman directly above the double barreled variant. Like it's brother, it was made in limited quantities in various barrel lengths (a few thousand).

The reason it's so decrepit is simple - this is a dug relic. The reason the wood's intact is that is was dug up in a barn in Maryland. This kept the piece dry enough to preserve the wood grips AND the functionality of the mainspring, but small pieces (e.g. sear, trigger guard, trigger return spring, etc.) and fine details (barrel stampings) have been lost.

By the way, here's a safety tip. Old muzzleloading firearms, even dug relics, have the potential to be dangerous. An old charge and ball may remain in the barrel and be viable hundreds of years on. If you ever find, buy, or inherit an old muzzleloader, do the following before doing anything else:

First, with the muzzle pointed away from you or anything/one you value, use a wooden stick or dowel at least as long as the barrel and that fits loosely into the barrel to probe the barrel's depth.

Second, note how deep the penetration is my marking the stick at the muzzle.

Third, remove the stick and lay it alongside the barrel (it's still pointed away, right?) so that the mark you made lines up with the muzzle. If the end of the stick that you inserted reaches beyond the touch hole, you are probably safe from remnant charge. If, on the other hand, your stick cannot reach beyond the touchhole, STOP! Something's in the barrel. You're best and safest bet is to take the piece to a competent gunsmith, treating the thing the whole while as if it was loaded, cocked, and primed. Accidents of this sort are rare, but they have happened.

Double Trouble...

What's this, you ask? Why it's none other than an Allen & Thurber double barreled, single trigger pistol, made in the 1850's. According to Flayderman, only an estimated 500 - 1000 were made...
...at the Ethan Allen factory in my favorite little city, Worcester, MA.

This one is marked "Allen & Thurber Worcester" on the top between the barrels. It's a percussion weapon, meaning that it was made with technologies post-flintlock but pre-cartridge (if you don't know what that means, use Wikipedia or go read something geared more toward your intellect). Even though it's double barreled, it would have been loaded with balls (like a pistol) rather than shot (like a shotgun).

The caliber is .36, and the rifled barrels are 6" long. The hammers can fire one at a time, or together, depending upon the order in which they are cocked. The so-called bag handle is surprisingly comfortable to hold, and the "ergonomics" of this piece seem well-designed. Modern manufacturers of small pistols would do well to take another look at some of these old sidearms.

This would have been a nice, concealable handgun for use as a primary self-defense weapon, or as a last-ditch back-up.


By the way, I friggin' love Worcester, MA. I know this is probably anathema to those who actually live there, but Worcester has seen me through some of my best and worst of times. Someday, I'll regale you about the time I drunkenly improvised some "free jazz" on a borrowed guitar at "open mic" night at the now-defunct Zara jazz club. But not tonight...

Honey, go play with that outside...

Actually, don't.


This funny guy is a late 19th century "parlor pistol", chambered in .22 caliber "caps". These cartridges were even shorter than the diminutive .22 short, and were basically the bullet propelled by the fulminate primer in the rimfire cartridge.

Believe it or not, pistols like this were very popular in Victorian times and were used indoors as part of "parlor games", knocking over tiny metal targets or making holes in paper. This activity was probably less dangerous than darts, although chronic lead and mercury poisoning may have resulted in long term health issues.

Imagine: it's the late 1800's - you and your closest friends get together in the living room after supper and drink brandy, play charades, smoke cigars, play cards, have a seance, and then bust out the parlor pistols for a friendly target competition with the fireplace as your backstop. Of course, this was long before "Twister", or even "Naked Baby Oil Twister" was invented...

And to think, nowadays you yobs sit around watching "American Idol" and eating "Hot Pockets".

So much for modern conveniences...

My, what a LITTLE pistol you have...

And now for the very small...

This little guy standing next to the standard U.S. Quarter is a single shot, breech loading .22 caliber (short, not long rifle) "vest pocket" pistol. It is unmarked except for a serial number, and the barrel is not rifled. The frame is brass and the grips look like rosewood.

Based on the frame design and the push-button plunger opening mechanism, this piece is probably a Marlin (although copies of this design abounded). If it's a Marlin, it would have been made between 1863 and 1867, according to Flayderman.

I've actually shot this piece (I know, I know...but it's mine and I'll do with it what I like). Even though it's so tiny, there's no recoil just because of the diminutive size of the shot and load. There's a short list of what a .22 short round will punch through, and human flesh is on it. A piece of 1/4" plywood is on it too, although a piece of 1/2" plywood is not. Pages 1 - 89 of a hardcover book are on it, but pages 80 - 345 are not. Anyway, the bottom line is that this piece could hurt someone (you'll put an eye out with that thing!) but is not likely to be lethal...unless it's 1865 and you've never heard about the germ theory of disease. In fact, due to the state of medicine, back then this pistol was probably a lot scarier and potentially dangerous in the Civil War than it is today.

I always imagine the original owner of this pistol was a prostitute or showgirl who kept it tucked into her garter. She'd probably be able to put down an over-rowdy client with it "real-quick like" given her proximity to his hurty bits...