help identifying this flintlock

[kentop]

Hi everyone. My doctor has this old flintlock that he says is a revolutionary war flintlock given to him by one of his patients who pickedgrov it up a long time ago back east. To me it looks like a contract rifle. let me know what you guys think. The barrel is at least 42 inches long. It is swamped and has odd looking seven groove rifeling. The pan is pitted from use and the frizzen is worn. The cock is flat with a beveled edge. there is a name engraved just to the right of the base of the cock (where a crown would be on a brown bess) that says "S Johnson". There's no date on the buttstock but this is the most worn part and pretty rusted. The barrel is pinned to the stock with round pins. The cleaning rod is all wood, tapers outwards and has a pigtail cleaning jag on the other end. The cleaning rod is "two toned". The exposed part of the rod is dark and the unexposed part is much lighter in color. Almost as if someone stained it while it was still in the stock. But it's probably just patination. The whole flintlock mechanism doesn't quite fit in the hole in the stock. You can see a gap between the lockplate and the stock on the lower left hand side of the stockplate. The trigger looks a lot older and more fragile than the rest of the gun, but seems "right" to me. The trigger plate is hand forged and is pointed on both ends with a wide area over the trigger. The neck is round, not oval, and the whole gun is in very good shape except for the rusty buttplate that has actually rusted through to the wood. Can anyone help me with this rifle? Especially that odd rifling? Is it worth getting it appraised?

 

[Mike Brooks]

It's a gun assembled from both French and English parts here in the colonies, can't tell where the barrel is from.

 

[pichou]

I have a hunch... that the rifling does not go in very far. An unusual fowler barrel.

Not a top museum piece, but certainly not a POS either. Appraise for insurance.

[edit]

The lock mortice fit is just rot. The gun has been overcleaned or very well loved... at least once.

 

[Dphar]

Rifling is more typical than odd. Rifling in American rifles was often not what a "modern" would expect.
It needs to be appraised or at least examined by someone not allowed to buy it.
A buyers appraisal is sometimes at odds with the facts.
Dan

 

[kentop]

Anybody know anyone knowledgeable enough to appraise such a rifle in Arizona?

 

[Mike Brooks]

$1500 to $2500 to the right buyer.

 

[pichou]

For insurance you would go with the high number.

Insurance value = replacement value = high retail.

 

[Okwaho]

I can't tell enough from the pictures to really form an opinion but Mike is probably right here. It's possibly a composite gun made from mixed parts.Just based on what I've seen here I would say $1200.00 would be all I would put into it for resale{and that's pushing the envelope} and the first $1500.00-$2000.00 would buy it.Absolutely the hardest guns to sell are in the $1500.00 to about $7500.00 range, too rich for the wall hangers and not good enough for the serious collectors.I also agree with Pichou about insurance.Go as high as you can as long as you have the appraisal to back it up.
Tom Patton

 

[Stophel]

I have a hunch... that the rifling does not go in very far. .

You beat me to it. Shine a light down into the bore and see if the rifling goes all the way down. Many New England smoothbore guns have had "rifling" filed into the muzzle end to increase their "rarity" and therefore, their sale value.

The photos are pretty dark and hard for me to see, but my thought is that it is another quickly assembled Rev War period gun. Probably New England.

 

[Okwaho]

Pichou,Stophel, Your points are well taken. The well known faker operating in New England in the 40's and 50's{?} is long gone but the guns are still out there.ONE of his specialties was the enhancement of a nummber of New England smoothbores by the addition of rifling in the foward portion of the barrels. The good news for today's average collectors is that the affected guns were high dollar guns. The bad news is that they are starting to emerge from older collections.For adeditional comment see: Tom Grinslade:"Flintlock Fowlers" P.36 ; Merrill Lindsay,"The New England Gun" P.viii. We may never know the full extent of his efforts but I doubt the rifling in the subject gun is one of his creations.On the other hand I am equally sure that he was not alone in this type of faking.So then, CAVEAT EMPTOR.
Tom Patton.

 

[JV Puleo]

They are generally known as the Kimball-Teft fakes. Teft was the workman. He usually also added the name of a known NE maker on the barrel or lock, engraved in a fairly large flowing hand. There was no attempt to disguise the hand so all of the signatures look pretty much similar. Another thing to remember is that the names of only a few makers were known at the time - I think it was actually the 30s & 40s, so that if you can't find the name in the 1934 or '36 edition of Gardner it may be ok. But, Kimball owned Kimball arms and he sold plenty of perfectly good arms so a gun having passed through his hands means nothing. None of the guns were actually "fakes" in the sense they were new (they weren't worth enough to justify making them). It was the markings that were bad.
As to the false rifling, yes they did do that & I have seen at least one example of this added to a small bore NE fowler, along with a fake name. I wonder if they would have done this and not added a name though?

As to these assembled muskets...I've collected these for many years and am throughly convinced that the "Revolutionary" dating is mostly wishful thinking, usually on the part of a vendor or a buyer who has paid too much. They often contain elements of Revolutionary period arms but most were assembled to fulfill the requirements of the Militia Acts that required virtually every adult male to provide his own arms. I have one made from a 1711 dated Humpfrey Pickfatt dog lock but other than the barrel & lock the gun probably dates from 1800.

 

[pichou]

Yes, enhanced originals are the hardest type of fake to detect.

Most fakers only do a few things well, and always target the high end stuff (most profit).

Dates are another thing. Earlier almost always means more $$$. But a nice piece is a nice piece, no matter what dates people try to tack on.

 

[kentop]

I will have high res pics posted next week along with measurements. I will try to convince the owner to let me disassemble it for other marks.

 

[kentop]

Finally, I've got high res pics of the gun plus measurements. First off, I looked down the barrel with my trusty Hoppes bore light and found that the "rifling" goes down only about 1 inch! The rifling then becomes shallower and melds perfectly with a smooth bore after that. The grooves look just as old as the barrel. Here are the dimensions: 50" from the end of the barrel tang to the muzzle. 47 1/2" from breech to muzzle. The lock plate is 5 1/2" long. The entire rifle is 63 1/2" from muzzle to buttstock. The bore is 5/8" wide from peak to peak (not valley to valley), which I make out to be about .62 caliber. The barrel is swamped and it looks like it has an octogon breech that tapers very rapidly to a round barrel.

Stay tuned for more high res pics. One other note. This gun was purchased at a Minnesota gun show back in the forties which ties in with your comments on faked rifles.

 

Here, this is so much easier than all that clicking and advertising. :grin:

 

[kentop]

How did you do that?

 

[kentop]

Thanks for posting the pic. You will notice that the screw that goes from the top of the barrel tang goes all the way down through the stock and is sticking out into the trigger area! Close examination shows that someone cut a shallow area for a square nut, which has since fallen off. I'm guessing that manufactured nuts and bolts came into existence around 1920. So this gun looks like a forgery circa 1940. I also noticed other "modern" screws on this gun that don't belong there.

 

How did you do that?

This is for Photo Bucket, but the format is the same.
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/223970/

 

[Mike Brooks]

Thanks for posting the pic. You will notice that the screw that goes from the top of the barrel tang goes all the way down through the stock and is sticking out into the trigger area! Close examination shows that someone cut a shallow area for a square nut, which has since fallen off. I'm guessing that manufactured nuts and bolts came into existence around 1920. So this gun looks like a forgery circa 1940. I also noticed other "modern" screws on this gun that don't belong there.

That nut is perfectly legit, in fact quite common on cheaper made guns of that era. I didn't notice any other screws that looked out of place either. If there are , it's just a replacement for a long lost original. That gun is no 1940's fake, it's the real thing.

 

[kentop]

Here's the rest of the pics: