I’m an idiot and wasted 1k buying a pair of 1852 real and functional canoe guns. Now how were these carried? Horseback, backyard?
Im an idiot and wasted 1k buying a pair of 1852 real and functional canoe guns. Now how were these carried?
I’m an idiot and wasted 1k buying a pair of 1852 real and functional canoe guns. Now how were these carried? Horseback, backyard?
>canoe guns
I think they went in canoes.
what caliber?
.69 caliber. Apparently, it’s supposed to be loaded with buckshot
>.69
Nice.
Nice
fricking moron. They are for canoe jousting.
Never heard of a canoe gun
Explain them post something for scale
It’s 24”, these were used by Great Lakes or Plain Indians. Essentially, they would take a long barrel musket and shorten them in order to use it on horseback or on canoes.
Here’s a better explanation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S4keaP1rC04&pp=ygUSUGxhaW4gaW5kaWFucyBndW5z
Post pictures of them now
Wow, you've got to respect how the Native Americans use every part of the gun.
Awesome video
At least they look cool
Could be used as a horse pistol or a carriage gun. Not that we have much use for either. Why buy actual historical pieces like that? BP is cheap & cheerful and that's the way it should be. I guess they would make good display pieces if you don't want to shoot them.
>Why buy actual historical pieces like that?
I'm not OP so I can't speak for them, but the guns I'm most interested in from a collector's or aesthetic perspective are all BP. I have a hardon for 19th century sporting arms--bore guage double guns, single shot rifles, etc. Why buy historical ones? They're the nicest, have historical interest, and they appreciate in value.
Now to be fair, they are a pain in the ass to clean. And the nicer the gun the more of a concern that becomes. I can see preferring to shoot modern muzzleloaders to reduce the cost and also not have to worry so much about condition, cleaning, etc. If you want to frick around for fun a Diablo pistol is cheap, meanwhile a comparable real deal howdah pistol is 5 figures.
>I'm an idiot
Yes you are, there are much better ways to spend a grand and have fun with black powder. $959 more specifically
Dude, authentic original 1852 functional canoe guns at $500 each is an amazing price. OP is fricking idiot for not understanding the value of what he obtained.
well, unless ....
>lucked out or you got ripped off.
Seriously, OP, answer this question:
> How do you know those are real?
Also, when you say
> "real and functional"
What evidence are you using that these are SAFELY functional?
Side note: It does weird me slightly that one has a right-hand hammer and the other is a left-hand hammer. If these really are cut-down mods, definitely look into the original manufacture of each. What were these before the mod? If it can be determined, that sort of provenance can increase their value significantly. Any and all history that you can find on them helps, including whoever made the actual mods and when and where.
If you're not going to use them or keep them, consider attaching that largest reasonable market value you can to them and then donate to a museum and take a tax write-off when it could benefit you the most. These are legit history and shouldn't be lost or hidden away in a private collection, assuming they are authentic.
I'm super curious about the markings too, especially for the one on top. The bottom one looks like it was built as a percussion gun, but the one on top looks like the barrel was converted from a flintlock, but the lock appears to be a percussion lock. It's also strange that the stock on the gun on top has a barrel band like you'd see on a miltary rifle. That does not match the left-handed lock. And like you said, the fact that both have different-handed locks is a bit strange as well. Is the bottom gun supposed to be shortened from a percussion rifle, while top one appears to be some bizzare custom job with a converted flintlock barrel and a lock scavenged from an unrelated SxS shotgun. The OP photo isn't of the greatest quality but it sure looks like there is some pitting on the outside of the lower gun, which makes me wonder what the inside of the barrel looks like; I would not go shooting these without closer inspection.
I am also very, very, curious if those are modern tacks? And if you remove the butt plates, do you see signs of fricking with the finish or modern tools being used to cut the stock? I'm not claiming they are necissarily fake, this is outside my area of expertise and all I have to go on is a shitty photo. Deals do happen. But IMHO this is something that needs questions to be asked, I see red flags.
If you made me bet $5 on what these are my guess would be:
1) the right hand lock gun is some export shotgun that's been cut down.
2) the left hand lock gun is some gunsmith special, the wedding band at the octagon/round transition doesn't match the cut down gun, and like others have pointed out, back action locks were rarely found with powder drums. The barrel band is likely used due to the lack of any pins or wedge keys to secure the barrel to the stock.
I would guess the original shotgun was cut down in the last century and the bubba special was crafted to "match" it. Canoe guns are the progenitor of stuff like tactical lever actions Albeit not rare, it's a shame the shotgun was mauled to fulfill some bubba's frontiersman wet dream.
From what little we can see I think that's a solid guess. The other really dodgy thing about the gun with the left-hand lock is the alignment between the nipple and the hammer, that clearly doesn't match. That one at least is a bubba special for sure.
>I’m an idiot and wasted 1k buying a pair of 1852 real and functional canoe guns.
People piss away 1k in gambling in an evening, or drink it away in a week. Never feel bad for spending that amount on genuine historically valuable (i.e. priceless) items.
>Dude, authentic original 1852 functional canoe guns at $500 each is an amazing price. OP is fricking idiot for not understanding the value of what he obtained.
Agreed.
>Never feel bad for spending that amount on genuine historically valuable (i.e. priceless) items.
You'd have a point if these actually were genuine historical artifacts. Most likely, they are reproductions. These kinds of guns are VERY commonly faked and there is an awful lot which looks wrong with these.
Are they really worth that much after they've been bubba'd by natives?
They'd be worth that much *because* they were bubbaed by natives, if they are legit. The guns they were made from were likely not anything rare or special when they were new, though we'd have to see better photos to say for sure.
I guess it's only worth what people are willing to pay, but I can't imagine the type of person willing to pay a high price for something like this.
There's a history museum near me that has a dedicated native American section, and it's mostly just garbage with some pretentious explanation as to why some driftwood whittled into vague shape 100 years ago is just as important, if not more so than the detailed ancient stone carvings done thousands of years earlier by a civilization that could actually get its shit together. I always assumed that section of the museum was the budget area.
I can't claim to be an expert in Native American stuff because that's not my area of interest or expertise, but I have seen Native American stuff can command extremely high prices at auction. Tens or perhaps over a hundred thousand wouldn't be unheard of. However, that's assuming there is solid provenance linking those items to an important historical person, or an important time and place. If these guns are legit then perhaps that information exists, or perhaps the new owner can track it down. Now I fully admit that the chances of that happening are low, but I don't want to say it's impossible. I've bought a handful of honestly incredible pieces from people who weren't exactly sure what they had. But what you said is the absolute truth: things are ultimately worth what people are willing to pay, and that is influenced by all kinds of factors.
>If these really are cut-down mods
It's obvious these are cut-down mods, the question is by whom and when.
Real "canoe guns" aka "blanket guns" were made by native americans from whatever they could get their hands on, commonly trade muskets. They were usually flintlocks and the fittings on the guns were cheap. These people did not have a lot of money and they had very little metal. Un-essential bits of metal like buttplates would likely have been stripped off and repurposed for something else. Provenance could be extremely important if any exists, but without it this is just a pile of red flags. I have serious doubts about the claim that they are functional because at the very least I can see that the face of the hammer on the gun with the left-hand lock is not parallel to the end of the nipple. In fact it's not even aligned properly, the edge of the hammer would hit the nipple, not the center. That gun at least has some seriously questionable gunsmithing going on, it honestly looks like something someone cobbled together out of random old junk guns. Now if that was, say, some Native in Canada 150 years ago? And this can be documented? That's one thing. But just looking at the pics this appears to be bubba's handiwork.
More photos would be very helpful, show the other sides of the guns, show the locks up close, show the butt plates, show the screws holding in the trigger guards. I want to see the tacks up close too. If they were put there 150 years ago they will have significant high spot wear and grime accumulated around the bottom edge of each tack. Also, it would be likely that at least some of the tacks got knocked down into the wood a littler farther than intended as the guns were carried. This should leave a shallow crater in the wood around the perimeter of the tack heads. With the passage of time at least some of the tacks would be loose. If they were put there recently you likely wouldn't see those details.
wow rick harrison showed up
God damn, those are fricking ugly.
those are ugly as frick but i might buy them just for shits and giggles
>1k buying a pair of 1852 real and functional canoe guns
That doesn't add up. Price is much too low if those are legit, condition looks unusually good. Either you lucked out or you got ripped off. How do you know those are real?
Add a chain between and turn them into gunchucks
in europe we'd call these a blunderbuss but if its just a cut down .69 musket then this thing is next to useless and you won't hit shit with it
>wasted
that's some well wasted money tbh
How is this a waste of money? These are cool as frick. I'd have bought them for 1k, even with me knowing what I know supposed canoe guns.
>canoe guns
Now here's the thing. Canoe guns aren't a real thing. An Indian or frontiersman would have probably only had 1 gun, so he damn sure isn't going to chop it up just to shove in his canoe. You probably aren't even going to be shooting out of a canoe very often anyways. Some people did shorten their muskets for riding and thick brush, but not to the extent that yours are. It's mostly a boomer meme.
Can you recommend any good sources that cut through the boomer bullshit and have solid history on guns like these? I'd like to learn more.
NTA, and I apologize in advance for trying to answer a question about trade guns since that's not my main focus when it comes to muzzleloaders, but AFAIK "For Trade and Treaty" is a decent start. A less affordable resource is "Encyclopedia of Trade Goods: Firearms of the Fur Trade". Again, I can't speak to either since I don't own the books but I've seen them recommended to people who want to learn about the guns of the (feather) Indians. Most of the people who have spent the time to document old muzzleloaders are old as shit so some of the best information available on the subject is almost always in print.
>Most of the people who have spent the time to document old muzzleloaders are old as shit so some of the best information available on the subject is almost always in print.
I know that well, it's the same with my interest, 19th century British sporting arms. The internet is useless, old books are the key, and sometimes out-of-print and very hard to find.
It is a refreshing change of pace to be preaching to the choir for once. Many seem to have become accustomed to any and all information being available for free on the internet, and trying to convince most people interested in longrifles to buy physical books for reference material is like pulling teeth. Especially when they are, like you mentioned, out of print and any available copies for sale come with a markup many times over what they were sold as new.
That topic is one of my pet peeves, actually. The internet is awesome, but it has a huge hole in gun information. New modern guns are discussed to death, of course. And many of the well-known old books like Greener's The Gun and Its Development, Walsh's The Modern Sportsmans Gun and Rifle, etc, are old enough that they are out of copyright and you can read them on google books, project Gutenbuerg, etc. Ditto for old medieval works, those are available from library websites all around the world. But niche books that were published in the 40s, 50s, 80s that are still in copyright? They aren't online. I can think of a few books it took me over a year to find a physical copy of, and a few hundred bucks a copy as well. Shooting the British Double Rifle by Graeme Wright, 8 Bore Ammunition by Douglas McDougall, all three volumes of the Brandt books on Pistol and Revolver cartridges, etc.
But really it's much more than that. We're talking about Native American trade guns and old sporting guns, those are certainly niches. But even something as fundamental as Sixguns by Hatcher remains unread by most gun enthusiasts.
Have you looked on libgen? Those type of expensive, obscure reference books are something I've had good look with finding on there.
Not recently, but thanks for reminding me about it.
That could certainly explain the one with the right-hand lock though it likely wouldn't explain the other. That one is clearly a hodgepodge of all sorts of shit. The lock is left-handed, almost certainly repurposed off a shotgun, no way did that originate from a musket. The trigger guard looks like it probably came from a double shotgun too, it looks like there is room for two triggers but only a front trigger is fitted. The hammer is not properly aligned with the nipple. The barrel has a "powder drum"--common for a percussion conversion from a flintlock--but that doesn't match the back-action percussion lock. The barrel band is from a much later rifle and Bubba has even put it over the octagon portion of the barrel. In my opinion it's unlikely any of the gun with the left-hand lock originated from a musket, except maybe the barrel before the percussion conversion was done.
Often dealers would mix and match parts, keep in mind that almost no guns of the era were made in one place. You would buy bundles of barrels, a crate of locks ect. From after 1812 until the civil war there was a huge number of cheap percussion conversions made out of all sorts of random stuff. Someone probably made them as a pair from random scraps.
No doubt about building from scraps.
Big doubt on the date.
Both look like modern tacks and artificial aging.
email stuart at Gun and Sword Collector, attach a good picture and tell him to show the letter to joe, mention that zach from maine suggested you contact them. They will 99% answer in the next issue and probably point to a back issue dealing with guns like yours including how to identify fakes or later novelty pieces.
And get a subscription it's cheap.
[email protected]
https://gunandswordcollector.com/
>muh bubba
yes, that's precisely what would indicate it's been owned by a native
Yes and no. Cutting the gun down and decorating it would make sense for a native. The rest of the stuff I mentioned makes no sense because some of the parts are too new for the conversion to have been original, and most importantly: if the lock doesn't match the nipple the gun won't fricking work. You can see that nobody has even attempted to fire the gun with the left-hand lock after it was bubbaed together because of the nipple angle. If you actually tried to shoot the gun like that the nipple would soon be bent forward and deform into an angled shape because the hammer isn't hitting it square.
Those screw in nipple mounts can easily be adjusted, in fact they were probably damaged/pushed out of alignment at some point. When they were made the holes were most likely tapped improperly or poorly silvered..
That's a possibility, though we can't say one way or another without better pictures. Still, Occam's Razor and what little we do know suggests this is much more likely a recent bubba job rather than an old one.
The better pictures show a bubba job.
The right hand rifle was most liekly an actual nock peice that was cut down. Probably not 1852 and the tacks look late as well.
The left hand one is definetly newer and was cobbled together from several parts. Modern tacks and looks like it was artificially aged to match the first. The front barrel band even is from a SMLE DP gun.
>The better pictures show a bubba job.
Can you post them or link to them?
https://www.gunpost.ca/firearms/muzzleloaders/windsor/very-rare-right-hand-left-hand-canoe-guns
Thank you. Oh yes, those are clearly recent bubbas. Tacks are clearly modern and very recently applied.
I’m so sorry anon
>1852 real and functional canoe guns
haha dude
Two guns
Nunchucks
Gunchucks.