A rather rustic blunderbuss

M ELEY · 7th August 2012, 06:27 AM

Wow! Sorry I missed this great piece earlier, Fernando! I am NO expert on guns, but several things did jump out at me on this piece. The point, already discussed and pointed out, of the blacksmith quality of this piece (which, BTW, I find appealing rather than deterring) and the second is the wood used to make the stock. It appears to be wormy ash, if I'm correct? This type of wood was popular for pike shafts, particularly boarding pikes. I find it interesting that this piece was constructed so and leads me to suspect that it was perhaps made in one of the Portuguese colonies rather than the homeland? Why else would this blunderbuss on all accounts be as primitive as it is? Hard times and few materials meant rougher construction, as seen in the American colonies during the Revolution, Spanish colonial pieces, etc. Of course, I'd love to say that this could be a pirate piece (

) and it does strike me as colonial. Bluderbuss were popular sea weapons (used to discourage mutinies), although brass barrels were more typical.

7th August 2012, 06:27 AM	#10
M ELEY Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: NC, U.S.A. Posts: 2,141	Wow! Sorry I missed this great piece earlier, Fernando! I am NO expert on guns, but several things did jump out at me on this piece. The point, already discussed and pointed out, of the blacksmith quality of this piece (which, BTW, I find appealing rather than deterring) and the second is the wood used to make the stock. It appears to be wormy ash, if I'm correct? This type of wood was popular for pike shafts, particularly boarding pikes. I find it interesting that this piece was constructed so and leads me to suspect that it was perhaps made in one of the Portuguese colonies rather than the homeland? Why else would this blunderbuss on all accounts be as primitive as it is? Hard times and few materials meant rougher construction, as seen in the American colonies during the Revolution, Spanish colonial pieces, etc. Of course, I'd love to say that this could be a pirate piece ( ) and it does strike me as colonial. Bluderbuss were popular sea weapons (used to discourage mutinies), although brass barrels were more typical.