To look right and seemingly correct many of us grey beards like patina on our brass. And until this year it’s what I did. Then I got to thinking.
The first guns were simple iron tubes with a tiller of some sort to hold it. But even some of these hand gonnes would be fitted with some fancy decoration.
The first civilian guns were very fancy hunting guns. Fine woods were often so decorated with ivory brass silver gold antler horn mother of Pearl that one could barely see the wood.
Most early military shoulder guns were iron mounted, but the eighteenth century rise of professional armies would see the rise of brass mountings.
They wanted the army to look bright from arms to uniforms.
Civilian guns for work a day, the trade guns and the guns sold to North American settlers were early on iron mounted. By the first decades of the eighteenth century we see a rise of brass mounted American arms, and most early rifles cane in brass up till the nineteenth century.
Barrels could be bright, or blued, and browning was an off and on thing for years, becoming more popular on American guns in the nineteenth century..
The oft told tail of not wanting shinny brass in the woods doesn’t ring true for me. Even in a well let pasture catching a gleam off of brass in gun sized pieces is real rare and colorful clothing was sold on the frontier
Should you have got a brand new gun with a white barrel how would you have treated it back in the day.
Why was there the switch to brass parts in the eighteenth century?
I few months ago I buffed up my brass on my smooth rifle to match its in the white barrel.
It looks newbi to me, I like old looking tarnish. However they didn’t have old guns then.
And style is style
