Some black powder fun.

This past weekend I had the chance to do some black powder shooting with a couple of friends. Here’s most of the firearms we shot:

From left to right: 15th century Handgonne (.75 cal), 16th century Japanese-style matchlock (.50 cal … I think), then a matched pair of smoothbore flintlocks from about 1760 (.69 cal). We also shot my 1815 Mortimer flintlock and a 1876 Hawken percussion cap rifle (.50 cal).

It was all kinds of fun. Here’s a short video of shooting the Handgonne:

 

Here’s a nice detail of the mechanism showing the match and pan on the matchlock:

This clip of shooting it shows the problems inherent in having a match (the burning cord) which was actually too small:

 

Then here’s a shot of loading the Hawken:

Examining it before shooting:

And then shooting:

And here’s a bit of video:

 

Some modern guns and short reviews of them to follow later this week.

 

Jim Downey