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My, my … now THOSE are bigguns!

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Big black powder shoot today. We had a flintlock wall gun, 4 bore, the ball weigh 4 ounces and are almost 1” in diameter.

We were shooting 300-grain loads. I also had my swivel gone, shooting golf balls with 400-grain loads.

Then left to right … a 32, 54, 75 & 4-Bore roundballs.

FYI, the wall gun owner wants to sell it …

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Then we had the BIG Swede, courtesy @rickystl, a 1600s Swedish ‘Snaplock’, a lock design using flint for ignition, but maybe prior or around the development of the Snaphaunce or Spanish Miquelet, but definitely almost 100-years before the true French Flintlock.

She is a 75-cal of 46” barrel & NOBODY there had ever seen, never mind heard, of such a beast! She looks ungainly, but the stock design firstly is intriguing and it holds really, really well, even offhand!

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Oh, this was my 1st time firing it & my 1st shot and EVERY shot fired afterwards … hit the 10” metal gong @ 50-yards, all offhand to boot!


 
Flint: Good Shoot'n !!!! I knew this gun was going to a good home. I remember it did indeed hold/point well for a 10-lb. gun. The build quality was first rate. It's such a great example of an early 1600 transition to flint ignition. What's also interesting is the butt stock design. It seems during that period there was as much experimentation with different butt stock designs as there was with lock designs.
Thanks so much for the photos and video. Seeing you shoot it totally made my day. And it does indeed sound like it shoots well in your hands.

Rick
 
Someone sent me this …

“The Wall Guns ordered by General Washington were MUCH heavier than that shown and were rifled. They would hit a sheet of paper at 400-yards, but note at the time a ‘sheet of paper’ may have been 4+ times the size of a typical 8.5x11” letter paper we think of today; i.e., think printing press sized. These Wall Rifles would have been useful against arillerymen and other such things that were generally way out of the range of the typical 44 to 50 caliber rifle.”
 
Someone sent me this …

“The Wall Guns ordered by General Washington were MUCH heavier than that shown and were rifled. They would hit a sheet of paper at 400-yards, but note at the time a ‘sheet of paper’ may have been 4+ times the size of a typical 8.5x11” letter paper we think of today; i.e., think printing press sized. These Wall Rifles would have been useful against arillerymen and other such things that were generally way out of the range of the typical 44 to 50 caliber rifle.”
Ive read that them, and the earlier doppelhaken, were somewhat analogous to modern anti material rifles, due to their longer ranger and better ability to damage what they hit. Siege warfare was often trench warfare, so having something that could punch through barricades or harass artillery would certainly be helpful.
 

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