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  1. J

    Officers fusil?

    I'd go a step further and say this thread had degenerated into pointlessness. It is, however, an excellent illustration of the power of wishful thinking.
  2. J

    Officers fusil?

    I have collected about 2 dozen original images of officers with fuzees... all paintings of the period. Every last one of them shows both a bayonet and a sling. The fuzee, in itself, makes no sense without a bayonet. They weren't carrying them to shoot pigeons. They served as a more effective...
  3. J

    Officers fusil?

    As I said in my original post, I regard this as a remote possibility. Fancy curley maple enjoyed a limited but long lasting popularity as a stock wood in the very high end trade. For instance, I have a friend with a smashing pair of steel mounted Griffin duelers with tiger striped maple...
  4. J

    Officers fusil?

    No it isn't. Buy the next edition of Man at Arms magazine... Its too much trouble to go into the details here. Or you can wait a year or so for my book on the Ketlands and the Anglo-American arms trade. Short answer... the Ketlands didn't make the gun. They were Birmingham merchant gunmakers...
  5. J

    Officers fusil?

    Its not an officer's musket... not even close. Its probably a fowler exactly as Mike Brooks says, restocked. English made... etc. I'd even say that it is probably post war (ca. 1795) and might simply have been supplied with a maple stock originally. Timber, hardwoods for furniture and related...
  6. J

    Help ID Shotgun

    Hollis & Sheath were major participants in the export market. The overwhelming likelihood is that the gun was simply made by them, (or rather, for them. I doubt they made anything themselves) exported as a finished product and marked with the retailers name. These were business men and...
  7. J

    can anyone give me any info on this gun???

    What you have is someone's attempt to make a gun out of some old parts... the stock is anyone's guess but I don't think its particularly old. The barrel, on the other hand, is old and I think may be an early product of the B'ham trade... I think (with a big emphasis on THINK) the marks are the...
  8. J

    Need Assistance

    Unless I'm very mistaken, its an Italian-made reproduction... the "PN" in a circle is a modern Italian proof mark. A.58 caliber rifle... probably one of the Zouave replicas.
  9. J

    British practices in priming Brown Bess

    Off hand, I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever tried to engage the sliding bolt at half cock and can't say I've ever handled a high quality gun that had no half cock at all. That said, I've handled a lot of guns and never cocked them - which is usually the case if the gun isn't mine. There are...
  10. J

    British practices in priming Brown Bess

    Jerry, I think the sliding safety was popular because it allowed an officer to carry his gun loaded and primed. Soldiers rarely did that and often, when surprise was a factor (as in a night attack) would be ordered to go forward "muskets unloaded and bayonets fixed" for the simple reason that...
  11. J

    British practices in priming Brown Bess

    A great deal of what you read about these things is simply rubbish. I can't tell how many times I've overheard or been told absolutely idiotic things about old guns, especially flintlocks by otherwise knowledgeable gun people. All it takes is one poorly informed "gun writer" making an offhand...
  12. J

    ? about seamless tubing barrels

    Well put Spence... I have frequently wondered the same thing. And, it wasn't just rifle barrels that were made by folding a flat sheet of iron over a mandrel and welding it... all musket barrels were made that way. In fact, all barrels were made that way. Actually drilling a full length barrel...
  13. J

    Manton shotgun

    Its nowhere near good enough to be a real Manton, not to mention that both the great Mantons, John and Joe, were long dead when that gun was made. The John Manton firm continued on well into the 20th century but I do not think that is one of their guns... A typical Birmingham-made trade quality...
  14. J

    Are flintlock hammers hardened?

    Jerry is 100% right and cyanide is the cheap method... cyanide hardening was also developed long after the flint period in order to save labor, not because it was superior, which is isn't. Regarding the metal involved, don't be so certain that the old materials were all that inferior. Most...
  15. J

    Would like help with identifying rifle approx. date

    I have an article on the Ketlands coming out in a future issue of Man at Arms. When? I don't know. Its a 10 page article so its hard to find the space. Its a preview of the book I'm working ... tentatively titled something like "The Ketland Family and the Anglo-American Arms Trade." I probably...
  16. J

    Pennsylvania Rifle Works rifle

    It isn't Whitworth rifling... its just the perfectly conventional rifling of the period... six grooves in such a small bore gives the optical illusion that its a six-sided bore but there is nothing unusual or special about it.
  17. J

    Pennsylvania Rifle Works rifle

    You have a nice, plain "farmer's" rifle, probably from the middle of the 19th century but perhaps as late as the 1870s. The Pennsylvania Rifle Works is listed in Gardner but, oddly, he gives it a "date unknown" although mentioning such plain percussion rifles. Gardner is pretty dated now, the...
  18. J

    Are flintlock hammers hardened?

    A word regarding imported locks... and prior to the Civil War, about 99% of locks on civilian arms were imported. They were all hardened and the holes for the lock bolts were drilled and threaded. I do not know if they came with screws, them may have but I've never seen confirmation of that. If...
  19. J

    Would like help with identifying rifle approx. date

    Thanks VA... Its always good to know that other thoughtful collectors agree with this stand. I should have said "nothing less than valdalism". A few words on that are in order. About 99% of reconversions are instantly recognizable as such. This is particularly true with guns like this one...
  20. J

    Would like help with identifying rifle approx. date

    It was flint... in my opinion, reconversion is nothing more than vandalism. You don't know, nor do I, exactly what it looked like and why in the world would anyone think that a group of new parts is somehow more historical than a modification made during the working life of the gun - it probably...
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