Oldest, Most Historical gun

[Old Ironsights]

Dissapointing, but not unanticipated. If I were a museum curator I would be highly worried about keeping a genuine 1750/BF gun in a plan glass case in a relatively unsecured local museum in a victorian farmhouse.

Like I said, were it genuine it would be worth more than the town it resides in (and should be in the Smithsonian).

Still, it's a nice gun.

 

[Mike Brooks]

Still, it's a nice gun.

There's no doubt about that! :thumbsup:

 

[aragorn]

Sounds pretty conclusive. I showed the pic to someone who knows about 18th c engraving and he suggested the design was too crude, almost certainly a later concoction. A genuine dedicatory plaque would be better made and more elaborate.

 

[G. W. Gill]

Richmond Sharps in like new condition. Thirty years ago. What a collection my friend had! He has passed. A true Gentleman of the South. I took it apart and cleaned it. I think that was the most that had ever been done to it. Maybe a little exageration there! They were not as crude as people think. It was as tight as a real Sharps.

 

Hmmm, well, I have seen alot in museums, but to actually have handled...my mind is kinda blank this morning, but I remember a pistol I wish I could have bought. At a Tulsa gun show many years ago, a fellow had one of my ancestor's pistols. It was a Colt pocket pistol with ivory grips and a silver backstrap on which was engraved "Col. James B. Chestnut"--later a General, who was on Jeff Davis staff in the Civil War, was married to Mary Chestnut of Diary fame, and related to my Gr-grandmother Ella Chestnut. Unfortunately the guy wanted $3000 for it and I had just been laid off! [darn oil business] I have also handled several nice longrifles over the years but without knowledge of their history. One, an Albright, if I remember right, was a very nice one...another was a Bedford Co rifle that was very nice, but I don't remember the maker. A friend of mine has an original Hawken squirrel rifle in .36 that belonged to his pioneer gr-grandfather, an early settler in Arizona. It is cool to handle!

 

[bwhoffman]

as an update, the gun I handled has a twin located in pennsylvania or somewhere there abouts. I have been privy to emails from the 2 owners of these air rifles and as of late, the east coast air rifle has the same repairs and materials used as noted in capt lewis' journals.
At this point, the 2 owners cannot find proof otherwise that the rifle he has was not lewis's gun!
Here is an excerpt from the latest email pertaining to the rifle I was privledged to fondle...

I'm scheduled on the Lecture Series at the Fort on January 21st, and if everything goes OK with the project I'm working on with the gunsmiths in Pennsylvania, I'll be able to give a shooting demonstration of the exact model of air rifle carried by Capt. Lewis. We are going to make an adaptor so that I can charge my air gun from a Scuba tank. I started on the 1500 strokes of the hand pump and gave up after about 50. I could have forced it and continued, but then I would have had to call Med-Evac to fly me home from Pennsylvania. Have you ever tried to pump an automobile tire with a hand pump. The tire takes approx. 32 psi. The air gun needs to be pumped to 800 psi.


Brett

 

[robinghewitt]

Oldest complete gun I have is an over under 20 gauge c1685. I also have an ECW musqt barrel c1640 which is fun and that ridiculously old gun lock thing which I will eventually give to the Royal Armouries :thumbsup:

 

[Slash]

Do pistols count? I bought Matt a set of French pocket pistols for his birthday a couple of years ago.Mike Lea guessed the time to be about 1730-1760. We also had a Louisiana historian look them over. He sumised that the dates sounded correct.
Slash

 

[Norskie]

Shot a Mississipi rifle that missed being rebored to .58 in the civil war. It still took a .54 roundball. I don't know how it got out of the war, maybe it was a pacifist!