New/Old Pistol

[Zonie]

At todays gunshow, I felt a tug which took me over to a table which had a demascus barreled pistol. (Some of you know the feeling of that tug. Can't explain it to folks who never felt it, but I swear it's real.)
I'm not usually into buying antques but the pistol seemed to be in pretty good condition and had engraved German Silver furniture. .
What's more, the price was right (after a brief haggle, ie "Hay, there's no ramrod, I cant' pay you that much for a gun without a ramrod!" "Ok, $5 off?" "How about $25 off?" "Deal!!".)

I believe it is from Belgium. The markings on the barrel include a oval with the letters L L G (or C) in it. On the other side of the barrel is a capital W or a capital sigma.

The barrel is demascus in very good condition. It is 5 inches long including about 3/4 inch of breech plug.
The bore is a rusty .530 with 12 very shallow rifleing grooves (ancient microgroove?:: ). The breech is a "patent" design. This breech block has a small rear sight cast into it. There is no front sight.

The stock wood is not Walnut, but is very close grained. It looks stained and appears to have it's original varnish in most places. There are several cracks in the wood, but I think if I fill them with Epoxy or Super Glue they will not split further.

The pistol looks like this:

(The German Silver wasn't this shiny when I bought it. I spent the better part of 3 hours on it before I took the pictures)
It appears to be shootable except for the nipple threads.
There's enough threads there to tighten the nipple, but not enough of them left to shoot with safety.
I think I will buy several of Dixie Gun Co's oversize nipples (.270 dia?) and use one or two of them to rethread the hole. Then use the remaining one to install on the gun for shooting ::

Does anyone have any ideas about where/when this gun was made, or any history about it?

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

Looks like a pocket or "overcoat" pistol from around 1840 -1850. Looks like it's a high quality one. Lots of European pistols had beechwood stocks-very close grained.
On the other hand, some European walnuts are dense and very plain grained and really don't look like walnut at all.

 

[jim gray]

Good luck with the nipple. It looks like that thing is just begging to be shot. I'd even be willing to bet that Zonie might even have some ramrod blanks or even a broken ramrod that with a little work could be pressed into service for this pistol.

 

[Zonie]

A bit more on my new toy.
Here are two photos of the underside of the barrel.
The pattern on the unrusted underside is very obvious.
I suspect it is demascus and there is a definate pattern of a wide band, then smaller bands which repeat themselves about every 5/8 inch.

Is this a demascus barrel??
Is it heresy to think about removing the rusty "browning" on the exposed surfaces??

 

[musketman]

(The German Silver wasn't this shiny when I bought it. I spent the better part of 3 hours on it before I took the pictures)

American silver is out of work and you are polishing German silver, thee odassity of it all... :haha:

Nice looking pistol ye got there...

 

[Slamfire]

It'll look good in yore sash. Ah jest hope ye don't get attacked until ye find a nipple for it. :crackup:

 

[The Kansan]

Is it heresy to think about removing the rusty "browning" on the exposed surfaces??

Not heresy! Not Sacrilige! In fact petroleum jelly will do a wonderful job for you. What would be heresy and sacriligious would be to re-finish any part of the original wood; It has somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 plus years worth of stories recorded in every ding and scratch. Expoxy the cracks if you must, but except for polishing, leave the finish alone.

I am fortunate enough to own an original (circa 1832) double barrel 12 guage shotgun and while I have had the barrels re-browned professionally and cleaned and polished all the metal parts, I have never (except for lovingly rubbing the entire stock with a little bees wax) been tempted to "beautify" it.

Also, it's kinda' hard to tell from the pics, but are you sure the furniture is German Silver and not, in fact nickel?
(The reason I ask is that my shotgun trappings all turned out out to be nickel rather than G/Silver and it too was manufactured in Belgium - Actually only the barrels were made in Belgium, the rest was made in England by Ancion & Co.)

Anyway, looks like you got a beautiful little gun there which should give you years of enjoyment!

...The Kansan...

 

[flaming canvas]

Track of the Wolf has taps to take it to oversize threads and the oversize nipples. I remember seeing 28 thread, but they may have others.

If this was made in Belgium, it may have a metric thread on the nipple.

 

[Rat]

Derringer made pistols like that, but I believe they were always clearly marked.

I'd vote not to remove the origianal patina from the barrel. It looks good and took hundreds of years to get that look.

Rat

 

[Zonie]

I am pretty sure the parts are German Silver because when I disasembled it, there was a nice Green patina on the underside of the trigger plate (which is attached to the trigger guard). In fact, before I started polishing the furniture, the green was so evident all over, that I wasn't sure if it was a light colored brass or German Silver.
The green would indicate copper is present.
German Silver is an alloy of Nickel and Copper, which reminds me of my mothers responce on learning this.
Said she: "When I was a little girl, I got a bracelet made of German Silver and I was so happy but it turned my arm green! Now I know why!!".

Last night, I ordered some .260, .265, .270 and .275 diameter nipples from Dixie. These all have 28 threads per inch which closely matches the number of threads on the existing nipple.
I plan to grind some slots thru the threads with my little Dremel cut-off wheel to form cutting teeth like a tap has.
Then I will lube with Thread Cutting oil and run them in in successively larger sizes thru the .275 diameter. I will leave one .275 dia. nipple untouched to actually use in the gun. ::

As to the stock finish, I agree totally. I have "refinished" several original guns, and my rule of thumb is every deep scratch, nick and dent will remain as it is. It is the guns history.
My "refinishing" consists only of adding as much boiled linseed oil as the stock wood wants to take and then polishing with a rough rag. ::

 

[Zonie]

While I was building my last gun, I bought several front sights to try on it.
I didn't use the small Sterling Silver sight I bought (TOTW # FS-FUSIL-1S) and decided that it would make a nice addition to go with the cast rear sight already built into the breechblock.

At first, I thought I would Epoxy it on so it wouldn't reduce the historic value of the gun, but then I thought, almost no-one in the USA is into collecting old Belgian guns, and a silver sight goes well with the German Silver already on the gun, so I soldered it in place.

Below is what it now looks like:

What do you think?? :: ::

 

[IronMan]

Looks good Zonie. I like the looks of the gun in general and the front sight just adds to it. :imo: I am looking forward to the gun show here in two weeks to see what I can find. :thumbsup:

IronMan

 

[Zonie]

Well, I lightly sanded the inside of the barrel (600 grit) to remove most of the rust from the bore, and steel wooled it to clean out what's left of the 12 rifleing grooves.
During this, I noticed an area about 1 1/2 inches in front of the breech plug face which has a pit in it.
This pit is about .150 wide X .090 long and seems to be about .035 deep. The depth is an estimate made by bending a sharpned end of a piece of music wire 90 degrees, sliding it down the barrel and watching it decend into the pit.
The barrel thickness in the unpitted areas is .120 thick.

Assuming this is indeed a demascus barrel, which is made out of several spiral layers of material welded together, does anyone know what the thickness of these layers would be? If it had the innermost layer, or most of the innermost layer of material missing in a spot this size, should I shoot it? :: ::

The bore measures .530 and I am thinking of a 10 to 15 grain load behind a .490 ball wrapped in 2 .015 thick patches.

If you say shoot it, and it blows up, I am not going to come after you with a lawsuit or anything. I just want to know what you would do if the gun was yours? ::

 

[Nightwind]

If I wanted to make sure I never lost it, keep it as a wallhanger. If I wanted to be able to shoot it, and feel safe shooting it, I'd tie it to a tire and proof it.

 

Well Damascus is not layers of steal but more a rope made of bars of steal then pounded flat to make a flat strip . That strip is then wound around a mandrel and welded the length . This give something resembling a barber pole . There is to my knowledge no inside wrap and outside wrap.

Because the steal used to weld the wrap is weaker then the combined layers in the Damascus this rusts first . We also have to remember that while welding if the maker got a pocket in his weld that was void ,, or a pocket of flux this will corrode faster .
The original barrels stock I have seen where very thick , sometimes 1 1/2 to 2 inches before turning down, and I have heard of even thicker .
Im thinking that your piece is probably 1850 as a guess/ feeling dye markes SS# makes me think its not as old as one would think .

As to shooting it ,,,,,,,, I would think the barrel would hold , however as stated above test it . Now normally im into the double load type of test ,,, however I think because of the size of this pistol and that it/you most likely wouldn

 

[WV_Hillbilly]

While I'm no expert about whether the metal in question is German Silver (or nickel silver). It is very attractive nonetheless.

I would not have done the cleaning and polishing, that you did. I am one of "those people" who leave old guns "AS IS", to retain their "character" or "flavour" or "history" of their usage. It takes a long time for that nice warm brown patina to get that way, and I hate to have it taken away.

There are plenty of "shootable guns" available to us muzzleloading fans. I would tend to leave these sometimes fragile and irreplaceable guns on the mantle or in a glass display--not that I have but one or two that I can actually say that about though.

Anyway, that's how I feel about it. Too nice to take a chance on shooting. And with that significant a pit in the damascus steel, I'd not consider it "safe to shoot" either.

WV_Hillbilly :m2c: