Up the Spout with an Antique FLINTLOCK:

.625 Caliber "Stopping Power 😮".. This piece landed on my front step recently .. Good One. - It wasn't cheap - as usual, I paid too much eh.

How did I get to be almost 80 before getting a FLINTLOCK ? 

- Well I reckon it's from the Ottoman world - possibly around 200+ y.o. - The LOCK, Cock & Frizzen bits strike me as being wholly genuine and of decent quality - and the wood & barrel look honest, whereas the rest of it's furniture is a bit crude. It ain't no Tower Service pistol .. but it sure has big balls .. around .625 inch bore.

"Patina": As received this antique was a little rusty and had 'pimply splodges' of black carbon/rust solids stuck on the steel - it was dirty and in need of 'TLC'. - DIRT is not Patina.

This thing seemed to have been washed or wiped all over with 'Brass Blacking'.

I had started to give it a clean and brush-up & de-grunge - when I thought I must check down the barrel just in case it was loaded - It had come from an antique shop. - I cut a length of dowel and checked with a tape - only to find that the dowel was solidly blocked 60 mm before the vent. That's SIX BLOODY CENTIMETERS of something nasty and hard lurking in the bottom of the bore.

I started chiseling out what seems to be solid sawdust and fabric imbedded in rusty mortar - Is there a 20 gauge lead ball underneath, sitting on top of a charge of old gun powder?

How can you shine a torch and look down a long barrel without pointing the damn thing at your brain?

- Dunno if you can see in my pics - that eleven inch barrel pipe is round at the muzzle BUT it gradually 'morphs' into a eight sided exterior before the lock, with faded engraving - did they hammer forge that back in the 18th Century? 

- NZ ecologists announce that they have found SMEAGOL SEA SLUGS (gravel maggots) on a beach south of Dunedin .. I'm hoping I don't find one in the bottom of my flintlock's barrel .. The SANDWORMS OF DUNE 2.

NZ Gravel Maggot Smeagol:

I almost need a jackhammer as so far I've chipped-out 1 cm and extracted this ..

This extracted 'infill' from the barrel might, 

perhaps be from a "Mud Wasp" nest?

. BUT there is a suspiciously rounded metallic surface emerging .. Uh Oh.

If that ball measures 5/8 inch dia .. my sums suggest there could be 11/4 inch of powder below.

The good aspect of this loaded condition is that it conclusively proves this gun is NOT a tourist item. - Plus, looking at the next image, you can see the scrapes above the flash pan where flints have impacted the barrel when firing ..

Can anyone suggest what this engraved word is? Namuomiu ?? - What language ?

-Your guess will be better than mine.

I made an extended shaft DRILL and a long woodscrew with a L Handle to pull this ball by using steel rod that had collars pressed-on .. from an old camp-cot. I 'glued' a center drill into one collar and a woodscrew into another, bent to form a handle, using SELLEYS' KNEAD it - a sort of epoxy putty that smells like old canned sardines in oil.

Well ... THAT didn't work. -The epoxy putty was OK but the woodscrew eventually just pulled right on out of that soft lead ball jammed way down that tube ..TWICE.

- Now the answer has proved to be a new Bunnings 12mmx380mm Auger Bit (Made in China) in a vintage 'cranked brace' - to drill through the lead followed by a bit of poking about ..

I Wonder If That Powder Will Work ..

What a load of crap I bought there ! - but I can now blow air down the clear bore and out the vent & I've got a safe tube to clean and de-rust ..

THE END

Marty K.