Expo number 3

 

Lock

Adapted from an early-19th C Dutch military pattern lock, the brass pan replaced by an iron box, curved underneath and with a pivoting rectangular pan-cover, the cock replaced by a strongly curved serpentine which terminates in a wide flat end, pierced with a trefoil and with an iron tube for holding the tinder, brazed against the inner side.

 

Barrel

Of octagonal section at the rear becoming, after a wide moulding, circular; another wide moulding separates the muzzle from the circular part; muzzle of octagonal section, calyx-shaped and with a bead front-sight of brass.

 

Stock

Beech(?)wood, with a full bellied butt; a three-dimensionally-carved seated lion is mounted in inverted position underneath the fore-end in front of the lock and acts as a support-block for the left hand of the shooter.

 

Mounts

Brass and iron, comprising: three barrel-shaped ramrod-pipes, moulded ramrod entry and flat butt-plate with long wavy tang over the comb, all brass, and trigger-guard and flat J-shaped sideplate, both iron; steel ramrod with thick cylindrical head, the narrow end threaded for a worm.

 

Remarks

(TECHNLOGICAL) This gun incorporates several anachronistic parts, but it has the appearance of already having assumed this shape during its working life. The barrel could date from the early 18th C as could the ramrod entry and the butt-plate. The stock may have been made for a late 18th-C military gun, but the shape of the butt would appear to be quite old-fashioned for that period. The two barrel-shaped forward ramrod-pipes may have come from a gun from the last quarter of the 18th C, the butt-plate could have been a mid-18th-C civilian type and, finally, the lock, trigger-guard and sideplate were probably taken from an early-19th-C Dutch military gun.

(HISTORY) Target-guns like this were used in shooting societies (originally civic guards) in the Northern and Southern Netherlands (the present Netherlands and - since the 1830s - present Belgium) right up to the 20th Century, but the use of a tinder-lock as late as the turn of the 19th C would seem old-fashioned.

(CF.) On tinder-locks, cf. Cat. 26.