Fake pistols with real locks, real pistols with fake locks

[rickystl]

Originally Posted by Kubur

Hi Rick,

Nice to see you back!

Your first pistol is a nice "tourist" pistol from Morocco and a Spanish look-like lock. By the way this pistol is not so bad. I wonder if some so-called tourist pistols were used by Moroccans for fantasia. Some local locks look functionnal, what do you think?

Your second pistol is so common. I call them Mediteranean tourist pistols as I don't know where they were made: Turkey, Syria, Algeria?
They have always crude brass decoration such as the butt, but sometimes they have very nice and old Turkish locks, with simple wood stock.

In this category, there is one singular pistol with a monster head butt.
Some of them have old reused Turkish locks. Some of them were sold for an insane amount of money recently despite the fact that they are tourist pistols. In a book I saw they are described as Turkish / Caucasian pistols. So it's possible that this kind of pistol has an origin in the Eastern Turkey and maybe some of them were really used... But I saw in Ankara this kind of pistol in the tourist market and they were clearly cheap tourist production...

Best,
Kubur

Hi Kubur !! How have you been ?
The first monster head one you posted, I can't tell if the lock is original or not without a closer view.
The second one does in fact appear to have an original Ottoman style miquelet lock utilized to make a fantacy gun. Also note the oversixe vent hole in the barrel being located well ahead of the pan area of the lock. This leads me to believe the barrel may also have been original and just utilized along with the lock, paying no attention to where the vent hole and lock placement should be while building this one. Strange. But it is a good example of utilizing old parts to build a fantacy or tourist gun.
Rick.