Francisca

This is a modern reproduction of a Francisca. This battle axe can be read about here. I'm in the process of trying to find and fit a handle. This sucker is big - like 2 lbs worth of iron...

Chunky silver ring

Here's a big old chunky solid silver ring with a lapis lazuli stone. The stone echoes the deer motif on the sides in intaglio - it functions as a signet ring for pressing a mark into melted wax when sealing a letter. Word has it that this was an old Roman ring, although the date is uncertain. It is definitely European, anyway, just based on the stylistic touches. Suffice it to say that it's well over an ounce of silver.

If I actually sent letters, I might consider using it to seal envelopes. Unfortunately, with e-mail these days, a signet ring would just punch holes in the flat screen...

Gewehr 98

Here's an old German Mauser Gewehr 98 variant chambered in .308. This one is pretty old and clunky - I bought it back when old Mausers were less than $100 at local department stores (at least in Delaware). You can follow the link above for Wikipedia information on these rifles.

This also marks the beginning of a departure for this blog - early on I had committed to avoid "modern" guns in my collection, however, I soon discovered that this is somewhat of a slippery slope since I've already posted some "modern" rimfire and centerfire weapons. Since this distinction is really somewhat arbitrary, I've decided to include real modern centerfire and rimfire weapons on this blog (i.e. those weapons that I'm morally obligated to keep in the big gun safe). I've made this decision for three reasons:

1. It's my blog, and I can do whatever I want.
2. These pieces are no less interesting to me than the old flintlocks and such.
3. No one is (to date) reading this anyway!

So, expect some modern pieces mixed in with the other interesing tidbits I post.

What's with the little guns?

There's something about a dinky little small caliber pistol that amuses me greatly. Maybe it's the thought of loading that tiny little ammunition into that tiny little breech with my big ham hands. Maybe its the idea that these low powered rounds are utterly useless for anything other than punching holes in paper or (maybe) killing a wild mouse. Whatever...


Here's another parlor pistol, German makers mark on the right side of the barrel. Like a few others, it's got a funny little breech block mechanism and extractor. The half octagon barrel's about 10" long, and the piece has wooden grips.

Continental sword

This little pig sticker is an artillery short sword, likely from continental Europe from the 1800's. It's got an all brass hilt with a stylized eagle head pommel. The leather scabbard is in fair shape, and the blade has faint etchings of military/artillery themed images and is stamped E.G. near the hilt. It's only about 22" long, so the kid thinks this is his. It isn't.

Parlor pistol redux

Yet another German made parlor on the same frame as the one I blogged about last week, but with a longer 10" barrel. The action's a little sticky on this one, but it does work. By the way, that's a US quarter down below of scale, but the flash made it hard to see because of reflection.

Another little parlor pistol

Like this post, this little fella is a parlor pistol, designed for indoor and/or gallery shooting. It's got German proof marks on the right side of the barrel, and has an elaborate little breech loading system to keep the itty bitty 6 mm (.22 caliber) CB or BB caps in the chamber. As soon as I get some Flobert cartridges, I'm going to give it a shot. This little guy will also probably be the piece I use to introduce the kid to shooting - low noise, single shot, no recoil, "safe" muzzlle velocities, little cartridges for little hands, and a little frame. This he will appreciate more than a shot with my S&W 625.

Old coins 7

Now these guys are really old. How old? Well, there's a high probability that they are older than your religion, whatever that is. These are old Roman coins from various periods, found as dug relics in Europe. This, evidently, is quite common over there. I don't pretend to know much about them, although I've had friends identify a few of them by sight (I really don't care, myself). I think they are cool - makes you wonder what happens to our coins in 2000 years, huh?

Most of these are copper, brass, or bronze, although a few are slightly ferrous as they stick to a strong magnet (not as strongly as steel, but enough to be lifted off a surface without falling).

Jet Man!

OK, OK...this is NOT something from my collection. But this is one of two or three local L-29 Delfin and L39 Albatros enthusiasts that routinely do groundpasses at an airstrip near my home - and it's really friggin' cool.

I first saw one of these guys pop out of the tree line as I was moving stuff in back in 2000. I thought the guy was crashing! They do at least one pass nearly every weekend, giving us our own personal air show. The best is kicking it in the inflatable kiddie pool (in the summer, of course) when they come over. Awesome.

P.S. My apologies for the drain pipe at the end of the clip - my stupid camera only does Quick Time, which I can't edit or shorten without "Going Pro". Pltpppt!

Achtung!

This is a German bayonet from World War 2 (at least I think so). There are a variety of resources on the web to track down the arcana of European bayonets, and frankly, I have neither the time nor the inclination to do the research right now. The serial numbers on the steel scabbard and the blade match, which is a good sign for a collector, and overall, the condition is good (appears unused, except for a small dent in the scabbard visible here).

Here's looking at you.

Through these old binoculars. They have a 5x magnification and the optics are surprisingly good, even while the field of view is small. They are black-painted brass with leather-wrapped barrels, and came complete with velvet-lined, leather case. The only markings are "5x" and a angle markings on the ocular bridge and "CIMILIA DEPOSE" on the main hinge pin at the objective end. A web search of this name yields no useful information, so if anyone knows anything about this company/manufacturer, please let me know.

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.

The humble beginnings...

of firearms technology looked a lot like this:

This is a fully functional, reproduction arquebus. The earliest hand-carried firearms were not much more than little cannons on sticks (or with hooks to attach to battlements). In terms of firepower, they offered little advantage to longbows in terms of distance, accuracy, and rate of fire and little advantage to crossbows in terms of accuracy and penetration power. Their value, however, was that they were cheaper to make and required much less training to use.

This example is very similar to those depicted on the walls of defensive castles in and around 1470, and has only two moving parts; a hinged flash pan cover to keep the priming charge more or less dry, and the "serpentine" - an early precursor to a mechanical trigger. The serpentine held a "match" which was basically vegetable twine soaked in saltpeter to encourage slow burning. The match was lit for the entire duration of the battle, or until the match was burnt. As you can imagine, the need to keep the match lit hampered foul weather operations, encircled the arquebusier in constant smoke and made his glowing match visible at night.

With all of the negative attributes of this sort of firearm, it's a wonder the technology ever advanced. Bert Hall gives an excellent account of the changing weapons and tactics in Renaissance Europe in his book Weapons & Warfare in Renaissance Europe. He makes the case that all of the challenges to firearms (hand held) use are obviated if the guns are used in a fortification/castle setting, where powder and matches could be kept dry, the slow process of muzzle-loading the guns could be done under cover, and less exposure of the shooter to enemy fire would be possible. Coupled with parallel changes mediated by gunpowder improvements and the increasing use of larger and more powerful cannons, this was just the advantage the technology needed to advance and become commonplace.

With a few years, handgun (meaning man-carried) technology advanced from arquebus through matchlock, wheellock, dog log, and flintlock, which remained on the scene for a few hundred years until percussion came along. For an interesting expose of the developments of this later period, track down the book The Flintlock: Its Origin and Development by Torsten Lenk. It's older, but worth a few bucks just for the illustrations alone.

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.

Itty Bitty # 2

Here's another tiny treasure...


The little guy next to Honest Abe is a little tiny bronze cannon, complete with trunnions, cascabel, touch hole, and all. It was reportedly found on the banks of the Thames River in London, England, and was probably an old toy dating back a few hundred years.

Although not a weapon in any meaningful sense of the word, I have actually fired this piece (I know, I know - you "condition" nuts should get a life) with a few grains of black powder, firecracker fuse, a binder clip, a bit of toilet paper wadding, and a cigarette.

It went: "Fzzpt."

And that greatly exaggerates the loudness...

But I had to do it, right?

After that, I wore it for a few years as a pendant before realizing that the true threat to it's condition was my own pungent yet alluring sweat and the risk of total loss by attrition (it was tied by the cascabel to a piece of waxed thread).

It now resides in the treasure chest.

My, what a BIG pistol you have...

OK. Now that I've warmed up with two WWII items, lets go back in time a bit...

This old flintlock measures in at nearly 20 inches. There are no maker's marks visible, although there is some embossed ornamentation on the barrel itself. The tip of the ramrod is bone or ivory, the butt cap and ramrod furniture appear to be silver, and the trigger guard is brass. The caliber is about 0.75 (these big calibers crop up on old muzzleloading weapons for reasons that are probably obvious - more on which in a later post).

My love for old flintlocks probably stems from my interest in pirates - I was obsessed with them back before ol' Johnny Depp was running around on Jump Street, so I cast something of a disapproving eye at all these young pirate posers we see running around these days.

In any case, this piece is not a pirate pistol, and likely never would have been. It's much too long, see?

On sailing ships or in shady seaside ports, long-barreled pistols would have been something of an encumbrance, even if accuracy is improved by the longer sight radius। More than likely, this is what was known as a horse pistol, where the constraints of concealment and discretion are not so important. Plus, the longer barrel would tend to steady the shot on a bouncing horse, as the expense of rapid movement (you trap and skeet folks know about this barrel length effect).

Anyhow, this gem is most likely from the Caucuses region - there is some Arabesque influence on the butt cap, but I think the wood carving on the stock show definite European influences.

If anyone has any thoughts on the origins of this one, I'd love to hear from you.


Oh, and in a couple of posts, we'll get to some pirate stuff. Honest.