Portuguese patilla
 

Fernando K, please do as fernando requested. I learned from you and you always made observations and posts so very much more interesting. So please remain active in the forum.

Respectfully,

miqueleter

Fernando: Thank you for the additional photos. Most helpful. Some additional observations:

STOCK: The lock mortise now confirms for me that the stock was made later to accomodate the older lock and barrel. While the lock and barrel have seen a lot of use and re-use.
BARREL: Yes, now you can see where the percussion bolster once resided. But it appears there was no effort made to fill in the larger hole and re-drill a smaller hole for the vent. Unless it was filled at some point, and just burned out from usage. (?) I sure would not want to be standing to the side of the lock while firing. LOL
LOCK: This is the first first I've seen with that downward curve of the tail on the lock plate. Glad that Philip offered his analysis of this feature. The seperate striking surface on the frizzen (battery) is quite common on these locks. It would be easier and less expensive to make this piece than to make a new frizzen. And, as mentioned, keeping the identification on the front of the frizzen. While this seperate striking face was usually wedged in place, some of the Eastern locks were actually held in place with a set-screw per the photos below.

Again, it's sure an interesting pistol with a multiple history. And a very interesting Thread. Thanks to all.

Fernando K : Yes, please stay with us. Your expertise is very much needed.

Rick

Frizzens, and their construction
 

Thanks, Fernando, for the supplemental images. The interior of the lock shows that this was truly a fine thing in its day, a pity that it has suffered so much from the ravages of wear and corrosion. The design of the mecha da caxeta (or whatever the concise English term is for the internal leaf spring that supports both the full-cock sear stud and which gives tension to the half-cock sear and trigger arm) has really deluxe touches, it is not the straight bar that is seen on more utilitarian locks.

Rick, the use of a set-screw to secure the striated striking-plate onto the frizzen body was common in Spain as well through most of the 18th cent. J D Lavin, our go-to author in the English-language literature on the subject, notes that during the 17th cent., the strike plate was narrower than the body, whose sides extended outward a couple of millimeters on each side of the dovetail to form a "lip". These early plates tended to also have grooves that were shallower at the center than at the top and bottom of the plate.

In the 18th cent., the frizzen body and plate were flush on each side. The grooves also took on an equal depth top to bottom. P 160 of his A HISTORY OF SPANISH FIREARMS has diagrams of both types, I'm sure you and Fernando have this book.

Examining the 3 guns with patilla locks in my collection, I note the following that reflect a change in design during the final decades of the 18th cent. and a regional variant on copies made outside of Spain:

1. Elimination of the set-screw. The dovetailing is so precise as to be hardly visible, and the sides are flush, with grooves of constant depth both consistent with the above paragraph.. This, on a Catalan-stocked fowler with a lock of provincial style by Fernando Murúa, analogous to a very similar one by Guisasola / Navarro dated 1796, Metropolitan Museum no. 16.135 which you can access online via the Collections section of the Museum's website.

2. Elimination of the grooves. On this gun, a fowler by Miguel de Zegarra (court gunsmith to King Carlos III) 1770s, the frizzen is shaped like that of a French flintlock with curved face and "tombstone" rounded top. But the strike plate is still dovetailed in place and the joint is very difficult to discern.

3. One-piece flintlock-style frizzen with no grooves. This on a miquelet lock of south German or Austrian origin. It and the stock with its fittings were made to accommodate a war-trophy Ottoman smoothbore damascus barrel of the 17th cent., the gun built around 1690.

I have im my collection a miquelet pistol whose lock has at the inner side of the lockplate a very similar spring. As there is not a single mark to be found on the barrel, the lock or the mounts I do not know in which country this pistol has been made. The shape of ist stock is very special, it never had a trigger guard and the shape of the lockplate is very uncommon too. They told me that it might have been made in Naples/I but this is just a guess.
corrado26

RIPOLL ?

(from Coleccionar ARMAS ANTIGAS by Rainer Daehnhardt).


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Do you mean like this other one made by XAVIER DOS REIS in 1758 ...

(From "Prestige de l'armurerie Portugaise")


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Fernando, thank you very much, this was a very great help. I just ordered the Daehnhardt book
corrado26

Glad to be of some help :cool: .

Yes, exactly.

Your pistol has proved to be a very interesting thing on a number of counts! What a life it has led...

Much agree. Great thread trying to unravel the mystery.

Rick

I don't want to create any confucsuion but, apparently this type of pistol was also made in Portugal. In the work ESPINGARDA PERFEYTA (page 463) you can see a pair of pistols with a Castillian style lock, marked with date PORTO 1780 and with an unidentified signature.

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So true, Fernando. The various types of miquelet locks had a truly international following, their popularity was not just limited to their birthplaces. Daehnhardt/Gaier ESPINGARDARIA PORTUGUESA/ARMURERIE LIÈGEOISE shows photos of some truly regal Portuguese sporting guns with patilha locks. Because southern Italy was ruled by Spain for so long, the patilla lock also became a mainstay with Neapolitan gunsmiths, and Brescian workshops also made them for the southern market. (see Marcello Terenzi, L'ARTE DI MICHELE BATTISTA, ARMAIOLO NAPOLETANO for examples, mostly with Madrid-style buttstocks to boot.).

Likewise, the alla romana type of mechanism was also made in Spain, note the exquisite fowling pieces with such locks by court gunsmith Diego Esquibel (early 18th cent., Armería Real de Madrid K-139) and a similar (K-138) by Nicolás Bis, see photos in A. Soler del Campo, CATÁLOGO DE ARCABUCERA MADRILEÑA

Oh, I forgot to mention the copies of patilla locks made by Austrian and German smiths, mostly in the 17th cent., to fit onto sporting guns built on captured Ottoman damascus gun barrels (the original Turkish locks were of inferior workmanship and almost never reused), or onto imitation Spanish-style shotguns made to capitalize on the popularity of the originals by virtue of their barrels. Modified versions of the lock are also seen on some French and Austrian breechloaders of the early 18th cent. The quality of the Germanic products was typically, as can be expected, quite high and the mechanical design kept pace with contemporary development in southern Europe.