Jezail 3: Return of the Not-Quite-So-Killer Jezail

[RDGAC]

Afternoon, one and all.

Once more I've been quietly beavering away in the background. A quick précis:

After Christmas, I started casting about looking for a means to ensure I remained hard up for the next 12 months (wouldn't want to break a habit of a lifetime). Browsing gunstar one day (just been back - to my utter outrage, there's a somewhat beaten-up Guedes rifle for sale!) I came across a jezail, with what looked like a very handsome barrel, reasonable stock and good-quality (if probably reproduction) lock. After some umming and aahing, I decided irresponsible fiscal policy was the in thing this year and laid down my money. Voila, one rusty jezail to my name.

When I got her home, I started doing the usual - having enormous attacks of buyer's remorse and prodding, in other words. Anyway, I quickly established some salient points, viz.:

Bore: .50in, smoothbore
Barrel length: 40in
Overall length: ~55in
Weight: Reasonable

Then, naturally, I started attacking the thing with screwdrivers. Since the lock's missing its forward sidenail anyway, getting it out is very easy. Out comes the lock - dated 1811, with a rampant lion, so close but no cigar - and it's rusted to hell and back, but seems in reasonable shape. Inletting looks OK, even though the trigger's set very far back (it works, for all that), and aside from the usual shreds of cobweb, bits of dust and so on, it's in fair shape. Except there's a massive crack, propagating from the forward sidenail holes, which I can see despite the sheet brass used to cover it up.

Curiosity piqued, I set about dismantling the gun in earnest - barrel bends are sticky but come off, and the barrel's just gorgeous. But it's weird, too; the touch-hole is blocked, and a false one's been painted on (!) slightly forward of its place. Odd thing to do, say I, and press on. Out comes the barrel, and... ah, right. The stock's completely sheared. Oh well, these things... what, what?! Why is this wood a totally different colour to that wood? Aw man...

You can imagine how my heart sank. I'd been sold a total pup. Massive break in the stock (with traces of evo-stik around it!), blocked-up and very polished barrel, false touch-hole, Afghan lock. I wasn't exactly ecstatic.

However, after a while, and some conferring, I began to think differently.

OK, so the lock's Afghan. It's still a very good replica; the stamped date looks pretty close to the real thing, and the rampant lion's been executed so beautifully, I find myself wondering if some obsolete ex-EIC stamps (which were, presumably, thrown out after the Company's absorption by the Crown) have made their way North-West. It functions cleanly, if slowly (the rust is amazingly thick and tough), without any half-cock grab or firing - a problem that has afflicted both my other jezails. Whoever made it did a very, very good job; some of the screws (which seem to be a weak point on Afghan locks) could pass for contemporary European examples, and everything lines up pretty much straight and true; not at all bad, for someone working by eye, probably with hand tools.

OK, so the barrel's been messed with. Conversation with a few people suggests it was converted to percussion at some point; the hole that's visible (with blockage) is too big to be any kind of touch-hole. Your powder would be down your trousers before you'd finished levelling the thing! It's a shame it was blocked off, but c'est la vie; at least the sellers had the courtesy to paint a fake touch-hole on, bless them. It's more of a pity that they insisted on polishing the barrel to within an inch of its life, which has removed (among other things) all its patina. But it's still a beautiful, wonderful piece of metalworking, and a privilege merely to see.

OK, so the stock's knackered. Best guess thus far is that the butt-stock portion is old; the brass that remains has a nice patina, as does the exterior wood, and the butt area (missing its wooden "butt-plate") shows some nice age darkening. There's hand-polish around the wrist, and the relics of old bearing can be seen in several places, consisting of traced outlines, caused by patina variation, and old nail-holes. The fore-end, by the look of it, is new; the brass plate is there to hide the joint between old and new parts. The sellers obviously thought this one out, since the brass matches pretty much exactly with the part of that new fore-end they didn't slather in wood stain.

It seems likely she's a composite gun, in other words; probably (judging by the closeness of fit), the butt-stock and lock have been together many years, and been married to an old barrel and a new, crude, replacement fore-end. I say this because:

1) The lock matches the butt-stock inletting well, exhibiting a close fit between the plate's tail and the surrounding wood, without filler.

2) The butt-stock and lock both show good signs of age; although relatively uniform, the pitting on the lockplate is not particularly deep or closely-spaced, which suggests it was stored in or exposed to damp for a long while.

3) The barrel is either old (some deep, dark patina still remains on the underside, fortunately - but, alas, no signature yet), or the most beautifully made fake I've yet seen, either in the flesh or in a photograph. Inspection with a bore lamp reveals a lot of corrosion, and several dents, nicks and patches of corrosion are present on the exterior.

4) The barrel and lock don't match up properly, and nor does the stock mate with the barrel very well. The barrel tang looks new, and is very crude compared to the barrel itself; the inletting on the stock has been partly backfilled with that odd brown-black filler seemingly ubiquitous in Afghanistan, though there's only one screw-hole.

I suspect the gun came together thusly:

1) Someone decided he wanted to flog another jezail. He went rummaging around the parts bin, since no pre-made guns were available. Inside, he found a broken butt-stock, with its lock, and a nice barrel. He put them together, but they didn't match up, so...

2) He took the drum and nipple off the barrel and whacked in a bloody great plug with a mallet. Then, he unscrewed the old tang, made a new one out of a bit of bar steel he had lying around, and threaded it up, before turning it in with a pair of pliers. But it still didn't fit properly, so...

3) He took a nice, hard stone (or file, or bit of sandpaper, or whatever came in useful) and started rubbing away at the wood, coincidentally rubbing away any patina it had managed to accumulate over the last century or so, until the barrel fit. He had to rub around the bottom of the barrel, and around the breech plug, and around the tang as well, and that made it all look a bit knackered, so...

4) He grabbed his ubiquitous filler and filled in the gaps, where he could. But that still left him with a broken stock, so...

5) He got a handy bit of pallet wood and sawed and rubbed until it sort-of-fit-ish. He tried to glue it in place, but that didn't work (it kept falling off - Bostik, hang your heads in shame!) so...

6) He divined the idea of wrapping a sheet of brass around it. Not only would it hide the joint, and provide an extra bit of longitudinal strength, but it'd let them save on that expensive Ronseal wood stain. So...

7) He made the new fore-end sort-of-fit, got a big sheet of brass, cut a bit down to size and bent it to fit around the fore-end, thus neatly disguising the huge crack in it. Then he came up with the idea of using a little bit of spare brass to give the thing a sort of nose-cap (nice touch, I think you'll agree - and its sharp edges make it a deadly miniature bayonet).

And so, stepping back to admire their handiwork, our hypothetical gunsmith-cum-carpenter put it up for sale, confident that some idiot with more money than sense would soon turn up. At which point, enter stage left, yours truly!

If the above seems a little cynical... well, it is! But I have to admire their brass (pun fully intended), not to mention the beauty of what remains of the old bits.