Cut down flintlock

[remuse]

Canoe gun? Just kidding....
My brother found this cut down flintlock in my grandparents closet in SC some 60 years ago. The butt plate was gone, the wood had huge termite holes, and the barrel was cut to 23 1/2". There is no known history other than that. The bore measures .715 and the barrel is solid. Lock works very well. The only marks are the odd "V" on the brass parts, an "M" as I recall on the lock, and what looks like "ARRIA" stamped under the barrel.Any idea what this is/was?

 

[Zonie]

It seems to have many of the charactistics of the French muskets roughly in the 1766-1777 time period.

Had the pan not had a fence at the rear I would feel more certain of this.

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

Can we see a photo of the complete gun?

Any proof marks on the breech of the barrel?

It is in some ways similar to French pattern arms of the early 19th Century (the fenced brass pan came in about that time replacing the inclined, fence-less pan of the M1777 line) but the quality of the work is not up to French standards. It is a very interesting looking gun.

 

[Stubert]

My first impression is no more than 100 - 150 yrs.old. The slots on the screw heads,inside of the lock, look too uniform, like they were machine made. On old screws, the slots are never that perfectly centered. Only my thoughts.

 

[remuse]

Additional photos. No proof marks. I agree the screws have a machine made quality but who in the world would have produced a flintlock 100 to 150 years ago.

 

[Norinco]

Wouldn't they have had screw cutting machines in the late flintlock era (say, prior to 1850)?

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

Wouldn't they have had screw cutting machines in the late flintlock era (say, prior to 1850)?

They certainly had jigs that aided in cutting centered slots, I can't really agree with what was said about off-center screw slots earlier.

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

Additional photos. No proof marks. I agree the screws have a machine made quality but who in the world would have produced a flintlock 100 to 150 years ago.

Flint guns were produced as late as the 1950s in Belgium. They were, before WW2 made for the trade with indigenous populations in the Belgian African and Asian colonies. Then, the remnants from those guns began to be sold on the American market when everyone wanted a gun just like Davy Crocket's. In other words, the flintlock never really went out of production. You very well may have one of the ones made in the early 20th Century of surplus original parts for native use.

 

[Supercracker]

maybe it's just me but I think your ARRIA may have been SABRIA>...

if you zoom in way close on the pic there looks like the remnants of an S at the beginning and the lower right section of the first R is different than the second. It's curve cuts back where the second one does not. Or, it looks like it to me anyway.

 

[JV Puleo]

I'm inclined to agree with Va. Manuf. on this. It has the look of a gun assembled from Napoleonic parts left over in Belgium... there were literally tons of this material still in stock long after WWII and flint guns were regularly assembled from it.

The trigger guard, with its iron base and brass bow rings a bell somewhere in my memory... its specific to some pattern but I confess I can't remember where or when I've seen it before.

It certainly isn't French military as those guns were heavily marked, but we should remember that French styles were adopted by practically every country in the world except Britain... the US included. The lock, barrel and trigger guard could have been made for dozens of applications - not all of them military. Its not true that all guns for the African trade were worthless junk. If a trader wanted to continue doing business, he had to supply a recognizable level of quality. Using left over early 19th century parts was the cheap way to do it... the fact that a lot of real junk was still available to be sold here in the 60s and 70s only points out that even the African colonial trade often didn't want the real dreck.

I once read a letter in the National Archives from a Belgian arms merchant to the Springfield Armory inquiring if he could purchase several hundred "Whitney" marked flintlock muskets (this was in the 1880s) as the natives he was doing business with would accept nothing less. These were good quality arms and, primitive as the customers may have been, they associated the name with a good quality arm and insisted on the same.

 

[Tumblernotch]

I don't know a lot about French muskets, but the lock may have been a condemned part that wasn't stamped. It appears to be from a M1816 Grenadier musket as does the stock. One thing for sure, the stock was originally a musket stock. You can still see where the lower band and the band spring used to be. The double fore-end band looks to be a sheet brass copy poorly done.

 

[Zonie]

The iron/brass trigger guard doesn't match any of the photos of various French muskets that I have and it is a unique feature.

I also note after digging thru some of my books that the Russians, who copied a lot o French things also produced convex faced flintlocks with brass pans. The few drawings I have of these show the same lack of a fence as was found on some French locks.
The Russian guns locks were marked TULE (in cyrillic letters) and often had the date of manufacture stamped under the pan.

 

[JV Puleo]

Zonie,
I think that is TULA... the famous gunmaking city that is home to "The Armory of Peter the Great."... Years ago I had a Russian flint lock musket that, at a glance, looked entirely French. It was completely brass mounted, marked TULA/1834 on the lock and had little Imperial double-headed Eagles on the breech.

 

[Tumblernotch]

I agree. The trigger bow is definitely not French. The lock is at least an unmarked copy of an 1816 French lock which did have a high fence on the pan. I'd say it's a good chance it is a Russian copy. They copied a lot from the French, even the language. French was the official language of the Russian nobility for quite some time if I remember right.

 

[Norinco]

You're thinking about the Prussians. Peter the Great did impose western European elements on Russian society, but the nobility did not use the French language. They did however, get many foreign words in their language.

Could that lock actually be Russian? Wouldn't it be marked so?

 

[remuse]

Norinco, Au contraire, I just read "War and Peace" last year which of course was set in Russia during the Napoleonic era. The russian nobility most definitely spoke french and considered the russian language lower class. French was the language of culture and diplomacy for the next 150 years or so on a more or less global basis.

 

[JV Puleo]

KanawahaRanger is quite right. The Russian nobility - like virtually all the nobility of Europe, spoke French. Virtually all diplomacy was conducted in French and nearly all treaties were written in French so that there would be less room for translation difficulties. It was the "lingua franca" of Europe... actually much as English has become in the last 70 years or so.

The fact that Catherine II learned to speak Russian was considered remarkable, especially as she already spoke German and French. Very little Russian was used at the Russian Court - often only among the servants.

But, I don't think its Russian... and yes it would be marked, or at least the tiny handful of true Russian muskets I have seen - maybe 3 or 4 of them, have all been marked. The point was that nearly everyone, Russia included, utilized arms of French pattern and that, because of this, there is very little we can say about the origins of the gun in question - aside from the probability that the parts were made in and came from Belgium. Belgium was part of France until 1815 and was the largest arms making center on the continent. Its simply a matter of statistics that it is the likely source.

 

[Tumblernotch]

I believe the name on the barrel is possibly ABRIAL which is a French name. A man by that name happened to be a minister under Napoleon. It's possible that a barrel maker by that name in either France or Belgium existed, but so far I haven't found any reference to one. I'd think there should be some inspector's marks on it, but maybe they were destroyed by corrosion or otherwise removed. I still have the notion that it was assembled with condemned and/or salvaged parts by a private maker, where, I don't know.

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

I don't think that there is any doubt that it is a Belgian trade gun made from various French-influenced surplus parts. Joe, as you know, with these guns there could have been many sources for the used and unused parts used in it's construction. This sure puts them in the "head scratcher" category, doesn't it?

As pointed out, it does appear that the stock was for a longer gun, the band spring and barrel band inlets are apparent.

The Lock has a non-inclined brass pan exactly like the French M1816 flint musket, a change from the fence-less inclined pan of the French M1777. This lock could have been from a Russian musket contract by a Belgian maker or a Russian musket acquired by the Belgian trade from captured weapons from the Crimean War or....? The cock or hammer is of French/Belgian style but not exactly in form like either of those.

The trigger guard appears to be that of a Belgian Cavaleriekarabijn Mod.1816-22 as seen here:

http://www.abl1914.be/cavkarab181622gew/cavkarab181622gew.htm

While that page does not show a good top view of the two piece brass/steel trigger guard, I have little doubt that in form it is the same or at least similar as the guard seen on Weston's gun. French triggerguards the late flint and percussion period were of two-piece production and, depending on the model, of either steel or brass and steel like this one.

The barrel would be hard to identify with the information available, we can not see proof marks but certainly there are some somewhere, the Belgians, even at the time they were producing these "trade guns", by law had to proof their barrels. An interesting name on the barrel, I believe that Supercracker is correct, the name is "Sabria", a Middle Eastern woman's name. While this probably doesn't doesn't have any bearing on where the gun was marketed it follows a practice by some Belgian makers of naming the various products for record keeping.

The one part that I see on this gun that may not be a military surplus part is the front band. While similar to the military product it is very crudely filed and finished when compared to the similar band seen on all French and Belgian military arms. It is possible that it was a surplus rough casting finish filed by and apprentice for use on this gun where finish of appearance was not as critical as on a military arm.

 

[Zonie]

You are correct. I should have said TULA.