fantasy matchlocks
 

These two comedy matchlocks turned up the other day . New stocks , obviously from the same hand . The Italian looking one is faked up from a Persian barrel with a European style flashpan added and a modern lock. So the other one ought to be equally dodgy. But look on. The lock , including its tiller is sixteenth century and the barrel ? Ignore the barrel lugs and flashpan which are modern.
I think Michael might enjoy commenting on this...

Hi Raf,


Thanks for keeping me in the back of your head when posting these 'beauties'! :D

You are right, of course, the barrel is an old item from an 18th-19th c. Indian matchlock piece, and the lock is basically old as well: actually this is the - cut-down - mere remains of what originally most probably was a Nuremberg made combined matchlock and snap-tinderlock of the 1560's, as the style of the serpentine in the zoomorphic shape of a sea monster, with its tail curled, still denotes. As the length of the lock plate now lacks its real proportions it seems to me though that the left half of the lock plate containing the original snap-tinderlock mechanism has been crudely sawn off.
I attached photos of three of those muskets at the Landeszeughaus Graz, Styria. The barrels are struck with the Nuremberg proof mark and the dates 1567 and 1568 respectively.
As you will see, the left-hand side mounted snap-tinderlock mechanism has been removed from these Graz muskets as well but the lock plates retain their original length.
Originall, these mechanisms all looked like the sample attached at the bottom.

Author's photos, 1997.


Best,
Michael

Thanks Michael . Points taken and gratefully received. The question mark over the barrel was that it doesn't quite look like any Indian barrel I have ever seen . The termination of the breech is irrational for any gun fitted with a shoulder stock.

That's right, Raf,

The rear section of that Indian barrrel (the muzzle is characteristic of that Asian provenance) was possibly cut down as the barrel could have been longer originally.

m