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Collecting Antique Firearms
by George Prescott
ANTIQUE FIREARMS HAVE always been
seen as an area of collecting plagued with
legal difficulties and this attitude became
even more pronounced in 1998, when
legislation banned the ownership of
conventional handguns. Even experienced
collectors became wary of buying antique
guns, thinking they needed a certificate,
which, in most cases, they do not.
Types of Antique Gun
In general, firearms are either smoothbore (muskets, shotguns, fowling pieces
and pistols) or rifled, with spiral grooves
in the barrel to spin the bullet and
improve accuracy (rifles and rifled pistols).
Many early guns were muzzle-loading,
using loose powder and a separate bullet
forced down the barrel, such as the
British Army’s Brown Bess musket (figure
4). Later weapons were breech-loading,
accepting some form of cartridge and
exemplified by the Lee Enfield rifle.
Muzzle-loading Guns
These guns are of varying design,
depending upon the means used to ignite
the powder charge. Types recognised by
collectors are: matchlock, wheel-lock,
flintlock and caplock or percussion.
Matchlocks
This group is the earliest, most primitive
and least common of the four types. A
gun fitted with this mechanism is fired
by a simple lever arrangement (the
serpentine), which pushes a lighted
slow match into a primitive pan or
touch-hole in the barrel when the
trigger is pulled. They were the
preferred military arm for several
centuries, being cheap and requiring
neither intelligence nor much training
to operate. They are infrequent at
auction, although not rare, nor –
depending upon condition –
particularly expensive. Guns of Oriental
manufacture fetch between £1,000 and
£2,000, European guns being slightly
rarer and a little more expensive at
between £1,250 and £2,250, although
exceptional pieces of either high
quality or a remarkable history may
occasionally reach £10,000 to £20,000.
Wheel-locks
Wheel-locks, the next stage in firearms
development, were a considerable
improvement over the unreliable
matchlock system. Similar in operation
to the flint and wheel system of an oldfashioned petrol lighter, this system
consisted of a roughened iron wheel
bearing against a piece of pyrites.
When preparing to fire, the mechanism
was wound up by means of a key or
spanner and the flash pan pulled back.
Pulling the trigger released the wheel,
producing sparks from the pyrites and
igniting the priming, sending a flash
Figure 1. Lock of Japanese matchlock musket, showing the ball-shaped trigger lever, the 'serpentine' and the
lock plate. This is a later type with a more refined lock.
By kind permission of Bonhams
Figure 2. Lock of wheel-lock rifle showing the complex external mechanism and the square rod
protruding from the lock, which is used to wind the mechanism.
By kind permission of Bonhams
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