help identifying this flintlock

[kentop]

Here's a few more out of focus shots that may help identify this rifle.

This is a blown out pic of the pigtail jag on the end of the ramrod. You can just make out the shape of it.

 

[kentop]

I found an interesting gun that was up for auction online that ended in Novermber of 2007. It sold for $1,912.00 and was called a New England style fowler.

I found a lot of similarities between this gun and the one I'm trying to identify. Both are plain with very little decoration. Both have rear and front sights. Both have brass fittings but steel barrels and locks. Both have barrels that are part octogon and part round. Both are the same length. And, most surprisingly, both have rifling that extends only one inch into the barrel! This one was made in 1745. So at least I have one reference that I can point to.

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

With the exception of the rifling and rear sight, the similarities are there because all basic New England fowlers and even the "bitsa" guns had them. The rifling and rear sight were likely added at the same time and were put there to fool the unwary and the unknowing into paying more for less. The forgers who defaced these fine guns were masters at aging parts to make them appear the same age as the gun they were added to.

Others have pointed out to you that there was an active era of forgery not so long ago. Many of these pieces still show up and are still capable of fooling some people. It's best not to be one of them, no matter how much we want our gun to be what we would like it to be.

 

[kentop]

You say that many of these "forged" pieces show up. Define "many". If anything, the faking of rifling could only reduce the value of the gun, not increase it, especially if such rifling never existed before. Which leads to a problem, why fake something that never existed? Why rifle only an inch into the barrel? Anybody could simply look down the barrel with a flashlight and see instantly that the rifling ends almost immediately. Who's going to be fooled by that?

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

I do not have an exact number to give you, but a large number of guns were faked back in the late forties and fifties and they are still around and apparently still fooling some folks.

These guns were sold to a lot of people who were not experts in the area of antique guns and just wanted something to hang over the mantle. They wouldn't question the rear sight at all and while the rifling wouldn't fool a knowledgeable buyer, it would fool this type of buyer--particularly since the buyer wasn't planning to fire the gun anyway and never really looked down the bore. The sellers told them that they were getting a rare early rifle at a low price and the customers fell for it. These crooks no doubt chose their customers well and no one is easier to fool than someone who wants to believe.

Fakes of much higher quality were also made and sold to a more discerning clientele. Obviously, they were much more convincing and costly. I recall seeing both types of fakes back in the 1960s, and some of them were quite good and most were rather obvious.

Fakes are still being made in some parts of the world, often for sale to the tourist trade. Caveat emptor is sound advice and in the field of antique firearms it has always been so. No matter where they come from.

 

[MacRob46]

Care to name the well known faker? If he is gone, i.e. deceased, that should not be a problem. There has been a recent auction of a New England fowler with the same rifling feature. Perhpas he faked it too. Well...there's the gun just a few posts up!!!!

 

[Twisted_1in66]

You know Kentop, I don't think these guns look similar at all.
- The wrist is much longer on yours than on the "New England style fowler"(NEF).
- The NEF has a very curved lines as it drops from the comb to the heel of the butt plate. The one you have drops to the start of the comb and then is very straight to the heel of the butt.
- The lines from the trigger guard to the the toe of the butt are a sweeping curve on the NEF. Yours does not. It has a very distinctive angle at the back of the bow in the trigger guard and then proceeds in very straight lines to the toe of the butt.
- The toe of the NEF comes to a low drop-point which is a continuation of the continuous curve from the stock in front of the trigger. Yours is again a straight line to the heel of the butt plate that is not dropped at all.
- the NEF also has an octagon to round barrel. Yours is round all the way.
- The NEF has a round faced lock (looks very Queen Anne to me). Yours is a very flat lock with two horizontal marks behind the cock.
- The bow on the tiggerguard is much deeper and shorter than the one on your gun.

I'm amazed anyone thinks these guns look the same. I don't think they even look similar. The lock, stock, and barrel are totally different. There's not a lot of gun left to compare after that. I'm not trying to be rude, rather pointin out the differences so you don't get carried away by wishful thinking. Wishful thinking can be a very expensive mistake.

By the way, the "pigtail jag" is usually referred to as a worm or sometimes as a tow-worm. That tool makes it easy to clean the gun using tow, which is a by-product of making linen. Basically it's the stringy shredded fibers of the linen plant.

Tow not only works great for cleaning muskets and rifles, it also is a great tinder for starting a fire. It would be very unusual to have that tool permanently attached to the ramrod. They were made out of iron and the pigtail end of it would easily bend because they are annealed but not tempered (to protect the barrel when using it). My guess would be that the ramrod was too loose or too short in it's fitting so they put this on to make it either fit tighter or be longer.

Twisted_1in66

 

[kentop]

The worm is not permanently attached, it actually fell off when I removed the ramrod last time. I said the guns were "similar" not "the same" there's a big difference. Of course they are completely different in details but they seem to be of a same type from the same era to me.

 

[Mike Brooks]

This is a New England made gun, no doubt about it in my mind. Just like all the schools of gun making in PA, there are as many schools of gun making in the New England area. Many many of these New England guns were made out of busted up French guns. kentop's gun I suspect has had the lock replaced at some time, possibly in it's working history, but it is also quite possible that the "S. JOHNSON" signature is a forgery, done the same time as the rifling. The lock is French, and there is no logical reason it should be signed with such a non French name. The barrel is French, The trigger guard is very early, probably pre 1720. It's French or Liege....I'd bet real money on Liege. The buttplate is pretty non descript, probably made of sheet brass at the time of stocking the gun.
This is a real gem of a gun, made sometime between the F&I war and the Rev. war. The fact that it has been rifled and a spurious name added to the lock doesn't affect the value, at least to me anyway. All this faking went on in the 30's and 40's in Massachusetts by a man named Teach or Tess....dam, can't remember the guy's name at the moment. It was done to get a few extra dollars because rifles made in the New England area are so scarce. The name on the lock is probably a known maker in that area also out on just to increase the value. The collecting community these days is well aware of what was being faked back then and tends to over look this sort of stuff now and see the gun for what it actually is.
If you want to read more about these fowlers here's the best book ever written on the subject, I couldn't go on with out mine.
Fowler book

 

[JV Puleo]

Mike,
You're thinking of Teft - it may have been George Teft. He did most of his work for Kimball Arms who actually sold the stuff.
The late William G. Renwick, just starting out in collecting in the 30s, was one of the big losers. When he learned how he'd been taken he simply gave up on collecting American guns altogether and turned to European arms which were so elaborate that faking them wasn't terribly viable at the time. (He was wrong there, but he still had some wonderful things, including the Louis XIV fowler thats in the Met.)

Mike Brooks is spot on. Its a perfectly good NE fowler made from an assortment of parts, some of which came from a 1728 or 1742 French musket. As to the name, when in doubt always check the first or second editions of Gardner (1934 & 1936) This is where the names came from because it was about all there was at the time...

What a surprise! Seth Johnson is listed as a Committee of Safety gunsmith from Rutland, Mass. The name on the lock looks bad and, if he really assembled the gun, he would have been very unlikely to have put his name on the lockplate (which was hardened). Few early NE guns are signed, especially assembled ones, and when they are it is almost always on the barrel (which was soft)...there are some exceptions but this isn't one of them. This was probably sold to some unsuspecting person as a "Revolutionary War Committee of Safety Rifle". They may have gotten $75 for it when, in untampered with condition, it was worth $20.


Also, it may not be a Teft fake. Teft usually engraved his locks in a fairly large flowing hand. That signature almost looks stamped (which would be impossible). Its too irregular to be believed. Besides, as I said, NE gunamkers usually signed the barrels and they aren't engraved at all, they are usually etched which is why the signatures look like their real signatures...they are.

 

[Mike Brooks]

What a surprise! Seth Johnson is listed as a Committee of Safety gunsmith from Rutland, Mass.

I figured that may be the case. Thanks for the info JV. :thumbsup:
Interesting old gun ain't it?

 

[kentop]

Thanks for the great info. You guys are providing an invaluable service to all of us out in the void who just need some straight forward, real deal expertise. Thanks again.

 

[JV Puleo]

Its a great gun. I'd love to have it myself. 90% of the assembled muskets & fowlers that are called "Revolutionary"really date from the 1790s when the first militia act really put the pressure on for everyone to have some sort of gun.

I am certain this one really is at least Revolutionary if not a bit earlier and I wonder if the barrel has been cut - it should have been longer and carried a bayonet lug but I suspect the nitwit who added the fake rifling trimmed it off because he needed the extra thickness and knew rifles didn't have bayonets. Real musket barrels are often paper thin at the muzzle.

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

And Teft wasn't the only faker out there. Just the best known--and maybe the best at it.

 

[kentop]

Speaking of fakes, I know a little something about typefaces and calligraphy and the S on the lock looks awfully modern. So do the rest of the letters for that matter. Actually, if I had to guess, that S looks like it is circa 1920. Handwriting script in colonial times didn't make S's that way. No typefaces of that period had serif endings on the letter s, those came later with hot metal type. Also, the oversized top curve of the s looks way too modern. In fact, the typeface Bernhard Modern has that type of s, without the serifs.

 

[JV Puleo]

I am really glad you brought that up. In my real life I was once a typesetter. To this day I collect 17th and 18th century books and completely agree with your assessment. I don't usually go into it only because so few people understand the subject but its like seeing a pantographed inscription on a CW sword in Helvetica or Souvenir!

And for the rest of our members...just like everything else, typefaces can be dated and went through periods when they were in or out of style. Lots of old faces are still in use but fakers very very rarely can tell the difference between the modern form of something like Caslon (an antique-style serif face) and the engraving on a Tower musket that was actually done by Caslon. (His day job, when he wasn't cutting type, was engraving lockplates at the Tower.) Unfortunately only old typesetters and graphic artists know much about this so its almost pointless to discuss it as a ready means of detecting fakes.

Russ T...
Many years ago the late Phil Smith, one of my collecting mentors said, in reference to the fakes of the 30s & 40s "We didn't know many names in those days so I expect you'll see the same ones all the time". That is what put me on to using the early editions of Gardner as a reference.

 

[Okwaho]

If I'm not mistaken the gentleman{?}in question was named Teff and I don't believe that he limited himself to fake rifling.There was a New England gun {and Mike,you may remember it}with some questionable engraving and an issue with the mounts that I believe was discussed on one of the boards a few years back.As I recall you and I discussed it and I suggested that the gun was at best questionable.Faking is not new by any means.Some of the better examples are found in old powder horns which have been enhanced{?} with spurious carving.As always CAVEAT EMPTOR.
Tom Patton

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

You are right, Tom. The individual was named Teff, not Teft. When I went to hit the second "f" my fat old fingers hit both the "t" and the "f". And the "t" apparently won out. Thanks for the correction.
Dan