Picked up two antique (I hope) powder horns. Wonder how old?

[chrisfoot]

Went to an antique mall. This guy had at least 40 old muzzleloaders. Both flints and percussions. He was in Ligonier PA. Saw some old original "Bedford Style" flintlocks. You could tell by the fairly drastic drop in the stocks. They looked very old but I'm new at this. Opened up the patchboxes on the Bedford styles and they looked like they were cut out with some rudimentary tools. But still smooth though... They just looked old - VERY old locks and in various stages of aging.

He also had about 40 very old looking brass powder flasks. And he had a bunch of horns. All sizes. Some were flat, others looked more like traditional horns. The flat ones were interesting looking.

I picked these two up. Is there any way of dating these? Be kind of interesting to get a range maybe.

This horn was very small. Pistol maybe?

 

[curnla]

My guess is 1800 to 1860 or so. Could be older. It's really hard to know, but they are old. I have owned many original horns and since the building technique changed little over the years, it is very hard to tell.

 

[Toomuch_36]

Looking good nice find!
The smaller horn was most likely used as a priming horn (filled with a finer granulation) and not used for a main charge.
As for dating, both horns appear to be of a simple common use design so date range could be fairly wide.
One thing I would caution, when looking for antiques, is know the dealer and/or have a knowledgeable person check them out as there are many "quite good" forgeries out there.

Toomuch
...........
Shoot Flint