From the humblest beginnings...

...shown in the previous post, muzzleloading firearms arguably reached their highest point in the Kentucky Rifle:

These long, rifled barrel weapons were instrumental in the European colonization (some would say conquest) of North America. They fused the finest elements of American craftsmanship - gunsmithing, furniture making, silversmithing, blacksmithing, woodworking, etc.

This example appears to be modern (that is, made as a presentation piece in the 20th Century), but it has many of the elements that make Kentucky Rifles so collectible - figured maple stock, detailed carvings of game species, metal and ivory inlays, silver furniture, flintlock action, and precision workmanship that made these rifles some of the most accurate muzzleloading firearms ever made. It's nearly 6' long,

The image above shows some of the detail - note the little silver snake emanating from the front edge of the rear sight. This detail is not functional - it only reflects on the skills and eye of the maker and the taste of the owner. Sadly, this example appears to be unmarked - although I've not removed the barrel from the stock. This is sad, because this gun's maker has a lot to be proud of, assuming they are still around.

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.

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 #9

The big one...


This piece is not old...but it's big. The bore is a whopping 1 inch. This is big enough to pose a serious threat to naval targets much bigger than a Sunfish. In fact, this sucker can throw a lead fishing sinker over a thousand yards. Its favorite fodder?



C-size batteries.

Just kidding - while I've regrettably shot a few of these out there in my younger and dumber days, batteries are not the kinds of things we want to be wantonly distributing into the environment. Better to recycle them...seriously.

However, if we ever go to war against the zombie hoards, all bets are off and I'm shootin' some old C-cells...

Let's do cannons #7

Someone took some pride in this one. It's a .55 caliber brass cannon on a home-machined aluminum carriage attached to a fiberglass base. This is apparently a DIY desk piece that I bought in an antique store after seeing it on at least seven visits. I finally relented to the urge to buy, even though it's not very old. It's been used - by an original owner and by me. It makes a satisfying bang...

Let's do cannons #6

Getting bigger...

This one's a brass naval cannon with a .45 caliber bore. I also built the carriage for this one, including the wheels. I like it...but I regret the Philips head screws on the trunnion bands.

Let's do cannons #5

This ugly thing is a .36 caliber homemade cannon. A good friend gave me the barrel - machined in it's current configuration, with the threaded cascabel and nut. I built the carriage myself out of bits I had laying around.

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 #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...

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.

This was an early mistake...

...that I made. This piece is supposed to have been an Afghan jezail carbine, allegedly used to kick British butt at the Khyber Pass. Unfortunately, what I bought in my early arms collecting ignorance is a hacky, poorly executed tourist item of recent make.


I share it here not out of collector's pride, but as a lesson. I bought this sight unseen on an online auction - the seller really did not perptrate any wrong doing - the piece looks old, and parts of it may actually be (e.g. the lock), but it's not original, and it was probably never even functional.


If you are ever presented with the opportunity to buy such a piece, here's a few things to look out for:

When I got this in the mail, it was filthy - giveaway number one. Makers of these bogus tourist pieces deliberately dirty them up after they cobble them together to give the appearance of age.

Poorly fitted parts - the lock and mother of pearl inlays in the stock show poor workmanship and sloppy fit - only out of extreme neccessity would an armorour issue a weapon with such poorly fitting parts.

Incongruous parts - the brass barrel bands on this piece are crudely cut from sheet stock and appear out of place on a supposedly "old" piece. The lock and barrel both appear old, and were probably cannibalized from one or two older guns.

Mystery gunk - I don't know what the hell it is, but spurious antique weapons from Asia in general often come replete with this brownish reddish "gunk" in all the seams - like between the lockplate and the stock and even in places where there is a gap in the stock. It's probably some glue cooked up from plants or animal parts, and is applied to give the appearance of age.

Crude markings - the stampings on the metal furniture and the quality of the mother of pearl inlays scream "hack" rather than "craftsman". If the stampings on the metal look like they were made with a screwdriver or an old iron pipe, it's probably a tourist piece. If there is obvious pride in the craftsmanship, you may have a keeper (but not neccessarily - high quality forgeries do exist)

Now, there are examples of these jezail guns out there that are worth purchasing - real honest antiques that may have even seen action. However, I'd bet that most of them on the market are basically junk, although they may make good decorative accents. If you must have one, but from a reputable dealer that speciallizes in antique arms.

Here's another bet - I bet that more and more of these show up at gun shows and antique markets as U.S. and other soldiers buy them as "ethnographic antiques" while deployed in Afganistan and other such places.

With all of that said, this piece still looks really cool in the arsenal hanging - well above eye level...

Repel Borders!

Repel Barnes & Noble, too!


OK, that was bad.

Now THIS piece could have been a pirate pistol. For real (although it probably wasn't). It's original flintlock (not reconverted from percussion). As far as I can see, it's completely unmarked. It's probably a European martial contract pistol, perhaps French or Belgian. The ring on the buttcap suggests that this may have been made for sea service - a sailor would have tied it to his person with rope or a sash. The caliber is about .75, so it's a biggie.

Stylistically, this piece is probably from the early to mid 1800's, and would have been made around the transition period from flintlock to percussion - a major technological leap that was made around 1830 or so. I have this pistol's sister in percussion - I'll post it soon so that they may be compared and contrasted...

Given it's date, it was made and used after the golden age of Caribbean piracy, but it may have nevertheless been used as shipboard defense in places where piracy was still (and is still) common - Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean.

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...

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.