Persian percussion gun repair.

[estcrh]

I bought this Persian percussion smooth bore, long gun at auction, it was wrongly described as being Caucasian and the stock had a noticeable crack or splice separation. I asked around in order to find someone who could repair the stock and I decided to contact Philip Tom as his work was highly recommended to me by a forum member I greatly respect.

Philip did a fantastic job, and fortunately the stock was just separated at a joint were two pieces had been spliced together. Persian guns are rather rare, in my opinion possibly due to the Persians early adoption of European firearms and this gun seems to be a very late model, possibly from the last phase of traditional Persian guns. I am really happy with the results, I have no plans to fire it and wanted as little work done on it as possible.

In Philip's words before repair....."there is one oblique crack crossing the point where the sling slot is. Disassembly will be needed to see if there are any related problems inside, and also need to see if I have to address any losses along the edge. I would need the whole gun to work on since the barrel has to be kept in place for proper alignment. The lock is a civilian version, possibly Eastern-made, of a mid-19th cent. Enfield percussion regulation pattern. The main difference being stylistic, a flat surfaced hammer, and a slightly different profile just on the front end of the plate."

After repair.
"As you can see from the differences in grain, this wasn't so much a stress break, but a separation of a diagonal joint in a two-piece stock. When scraping off the crud, there were traces of the original organic glue under the newer clear adhesive of the later amateur repair. The saw cuts on the mating surface weren't perfectly smooth so I had to dig the old stuff out of the crevices to make sure my repair had 100% contact.

The inlaid bone sling escutcheons have these pieces of brass inlaid in them, these are not original and were probably put in by the guy who did the last repair. Rawhide thongs once went through these, which were knotted through holes at the end of the wider leather belt that served as a sling. I decided to leave the brass in, even though not original, because taking them out might open another can of worms as far as stability of the inlays. If it can be done cheaply, a local gunsmith can install a bead type brass shotgun sight in the hole in the barrel. That's what it had originally since the barrel is off an English sporting gun.

Mechanical repair to the firing mechanism isn't any priority since you're not planning to shoot this. The percussion nipple is all munged up and needs to be drilled out and replaced with a new one -- too much money and the new nipple is going to stick out like a sore thumb. The gun looks great as is in an ethnographic collection. As you probably know, the style of stock inlay and the overall quality mark it as being a provincial piece, from one of the tribal areas, probably from southeast Iran since the decor is reminiscent of the circular motifs on the grips of chooras and other daggers from Afghanistan and the Sind."