Help IDing this old musket

[Odentheviking]

http://i720.photobucket.com/albums/ww207/tiger_rifles/Mobile Uploads/image_2.jpg

Here are four bad pics, taken from a friends collection.

 

[Odentheviking]

Friend has a flintlock musket that I like if I had more information I would grab it.(will try and load some pictures).
It just seems like an older repro but well make. Bright metal with no brass. metal ramrod, but not military style, more like a trumpet style, not a button style. The rod guides are large as if it should be wood. Barrel is 65 cal I would guess, octagon with engagement ring at about half way then round. on Barrel flat is marked "STADT COTHEN 1706". Lock is like a banana style with a tombstone stamp with "LP" just under the pan. All other metal is bright with what seems like fancier style Brown Bess...... but the stock is more of a club foot style. the wood is very dark, almost like a paint as you can not really see any grains.

Any guesses? Thanks!

 

[nhmoose]

That is not a club butt for sure.

 

[robinghewitt]

There is a Linz Stadt listed in Vienna, around 1691 which is close enough, but Cothen is in Germany. Maybe he moved. The Germans were a bit mad on wheel locks :idunno:

 

[ron wehmeyer]

Is it possible to get a look at the Butt plate / and muzzle / and the whole firearm ? ,,,Would be very helpfull in positively Id. the gun and originality,,,,DT

 

[TFoley]

It is unlikely in the extreme that this arm is any kind of reproduction.

Most repros/replications are copies of well-known and popular originals, of which is is not one. Furthermore, there are just too many details to this arm that shout 'original'. Even the rack markings use correct continental-style numbers - look at the number '1'.

A set of images from end to end would be good, and allow the experts here to make better assessment.

tac

 

[robinghewitt]

I have lost sight of all but one of your pictures while creating this image so I cannot compare the lock plate back end which is the interesting bit... Ain't computers wonderful :idunno:

 

[Odentheviking]

http://i720.photobucket.com/albums/ww207/tiger_rifles/Mobile Uploads/image_3.jpg


Thanks to all that posted! Here is the picture of the lock plate. To me the musket I held and the one pictured here are the same musket. Only difference is this trigger guard has a hole for the sling swivel, and the darker patina.
I will see if I can a few more pictures with my camera as I only had my phone last time and had problems loading onto Photobucket.
Thanks again!

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Just can't say without lots more photos. Old parts were cobbled together to make working guns, so the name on the barrel might not be the assembler of the gun. A lot of Dutch muskets were bought by the English at the beginning of the 18th century. So you could by the time of the F&I still find them or find muskets made from combining Dutch and British parts....and that's not yet considering what a civilian gunsmith might do.

Also, old parts have been cobbled together in the past to create a decorative piece...., and also sometimes to create a fraudulent piece. One would need some photos to even begin. Sometimes a decorative piece is passed down, sold in an estate, sold by an antique dealer who really doesn't know guns, and eventually the folks who get it assume it's original...

:idunno:

LD

 

[robinghewitt]

As locks get older the plates become more banana shaped and pointier in the tail.

Go back far enough and you get 3 cross pins to hold them on. Yours only has 2 cross pins but the side plate extends back towards the missing pin because it wouldn't look right if it didn't.

:thumbsup:

 

[satx78247]

Pardon me for pointing out that "cobbled together" is pejorative & frequently simply inaccurate, when one is talking about frontier-made firearms. - As I've said elsewhere, NOTHING was wasted in the 18-19th century frontier areas; instead usable parts were "re-purposed", "recycled" & used until they were too badly worn to be used for the original purpose.
(Additionally certain parts,particularly locks, were imported from Europe rather than made here.)

THEN, those "worn-out parts" were frequently melted down & made into a different useful item. - "Frontier America" was anything but a "throwaway society" & many blacksmith-made items are quite artistic & at least USEFUL.

I would further suggest that my great-uncle Oliver H. (Fox Swimming) Parker of Delaware County, Indian Territory (& later of OK) & who made many beautiful BP rifles until his death in the mid-20th Century (at 99YO), often imported locks & certain other parts for his long-rifles & fowlers from the UK.
(At the Oklahoma Statehood Centennial in 2007, several of his BP rifles were on display at the Old State Capitol at Enid & it was generally agreed by historians & his peers that his work was "emblematic of the most skilled & artistic of Oklahoma's Native American artists in metal & wood".)

just my opinion, satx

 

[satx78247]

Note: My Uncle "Ollie" was a resourceful man & is credited with building the first powered fishing boat for a Delaware County commercial fisherman sometime before Statehood in 1907.
(Needing a suitable engine, the rode his mule to Miami, OK, measured a "slow-speed plant" that was used at a flour mill there, returned to Grove, built a copy of the 1-cylinder "oil engine" & "from scratch", constructed the wooden 23 foot hull & completed the boat for his customer.)

According to THE GROVE SUN newspaper's JOURNAL OF EARLY OKLAHOMA (Published JAN 2007), the boat worked well for "pulling nets" (& for market hunting for waterfowl, as long as market hunting was lawful). "on the Cowskin River & was used in that fishery until about WWII."

He was also "well-known" in IT/OK for making "- - - ornate & beautifully constructed wrought-iron gates, fencing & other ornamental items of use by the gentry", including (it is believed, though I've NOT found documentary proof) the fence at the OK Governor's Mansion.

I've said all of this to say that there were MANY multi-talented tradesmen "on the frontier" (wherever "the frontier" was at any given period) & who crafted items that could otherwise not be procured locally.

yours, satx

 

[Fernando Keilty]

Hello everyone

STADT COTHENsignifica in German city Cothen. So this would be a German musket

Affectionately

 

[Odentheviking]

Squire Robin,
What is the musket you have pictured here?

 

I know you're really proud of your family and like to talk about them, but what does this have to do with the topic? Fishing boat, oil engine, gates, fences?

Note: My Uncle "Ollie" was a resourceful man & is credited with building the first powered fishing boat for a Delaware County commercial fisherman sometime before Statehood in 1907.
(Needing a suitable engine, the rode his mule to Miami, OK, measured a "slow-speed plant" that was used at a flour mill there, returned to Grove, built a copy of the 1-cylinder "oil engine" & "from scratch", constructed the wooden 23 foot hull & completed the boat for his customer.)

According to THE GROVE SUN newspaper's JOURNAL OF EARLY OKLAHOMA (Published JAN 2007), the boat worked well for "pulling nets" (& for market hunting for waterfowl, as long as market hunting was lawful). "on the Cowskin River & was used in that fishery until about WWII."

He was also "well-known" in IT/OK for making "- - - ornate & beautifully constructed wrought-iron gates, fencing & other ornamental items of use by the gentry", including (it is believed, though I've NOT found documentary proof) the fence at the OK Governor's Mansion.

I've said all of this to say that there were MANY multi-talented tradesmen "on the frontier" (wherever "the frontier" was at any given period) & who crafted items that could otherwise not be procured locally.

yours, satx

 

[Zonie]

He's just saying people back in the day were a resourceful bunch who often used or modified old or worn out things to suit the job they were doing.

Apparently, his uncle was good at it.

Back in the day, using old gun parts to create new guns was a common thing.
(It still is up to a point but today it is often easier to buy new parts than to fool around with old ones.)

 

[robinghewitt]

Squire Robin,
What is the musket you have pictured here?

Just a stock and lock I saw in my wild gun buying past. I thought it looked early Dutch.

 

[satx78247]

AGREED.

More to the point, "repurposing" & "recycling" old items so that they could be used again was important to the history of The West AND in many cases those "remade" items were artistic & NOT "junk".
Imo, it is all too common for "moderns" to believe that anything handmade & that was not "fancy", ornate or "expensively made" for the rich Eastern elites of society is somehow inferior to beautifully crafted but "plain-looking" similar items.

While I certainly admire a fine-quality PA or KY rifle of the "classic period", I wouldn't "go into debt" to acquire one.
Otoh, I would quickly make a trip to the bank & to borrow the necessary funds (however much that might be) to buy the "really Plain Jane" 12-bore rifle (that was made from 5 "junked guns" in Nacogdoches, TX in 1837-38) for Harriet (Ames) Potter, "our own East Texas Wildcat".
(I've looked all over Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma & Louisiana, following "leads", for over 2 decades for that rifle. - I've not & won't give up looking for "Pretty Mollie", as that single rifle is an essential piece of our State's history.)

just my opinions, satx

 

[Odentheviking]

OK Girls! You're both pretty! Can we get back to IDing this musket an away from used parts?
http://i720.photobucket.com/albums/ww207/tiger_rifles/Trader-Trapper/image.jpg1.jpg

This should be 10 new pictures I was allowed to take. From what has been said and what I have found this is looking very German or Dutch.
If so, can you give me some idea of when it was made/used? For a piece this clean and unused, could it really be made in 1706?
Thank you all for replies.

 

[robinghewitt]

To know if it is old, the first place I look is how far does the butt plate overhang the stock? Wood shrinks, iron stays the same :thumbsup: