An old flask and some powder horns

[6thtexas]

I inherited an old flask and some powderhorns. The former is complete but the lever does not work. I have doused the head with kroil a time or two but to no avail. The horns all need stoppers and the wooden base plugs are very dried out. What is the best thing to rejuvenate them? I would like to take one or two of these things hunting if I could. The flask still has powder in it and the little horn has caps in it.

 

[6thtexas]

Small horn. That piece of paper used to stopper it was part of an old railroad ticket.

 

[Grenadier1758]

A couple of dousings of Kroil aren't going to do enough penetration to loosen the workings up. It may take a full on soaking for several days for the penetrant to work through the built up corrosion internal to the head of the flask. Patience is advice here. Every couple of days after starting the soak, try to move the lever. Be prepared to put it all back in the Kroil and try again in a few days. Nice find.

 

[PathfinderNC]

Those are wonderful old horns! If there is a story behind them you might document as much as you can to put some provenance to them.
As to the wood plugs, once it's shrunken with age, there really isn't anything you can do to get them back to their original size. Don't try to swell them with water because that won't work on old brittle wood. Just enjoy them as they are. If you want to mess 'em up with silicone caulk or something to make them 'usable', they will not be happy old horns any more.
Nice bits of history there and the Railroad clipping as a stopper is a hoot!

 

[French Colonial]

Does the head unscrew from the body of the flask? If it does, unscrew it and put it in a cup of penetrating oil and let it soak like Grenadier says, be patient and gently try to move it every day or so...

Horns, soak them in Ballistol, stuff works on everything

 

[oldwood]

The way 18th century folks repaired a leaky , shrunken powder horn plug , was to take a warmed , slightly softened cake of bee's wax and rub it into the cracks in horn and wood. A little boiled linseed oil might be good to condition the wood plug as well. Crazy Crow has some nice violin tuning pegs that are considered historically ok to plug the small end. ...........oldwood

 

[ohio ramrod]

BLO will help the dried out wood. Then a good coating of beeswax to seal things up.For the flask valve they say a mixture of 50/50 acetone and automatic transmission fluid is even better than kroil