Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction House
taking a look at some of the guns, including ludicrously
oversized guns, that they're going to be selling
in their December of 2016 Premiere Auction.
This one is a Belgian manufactured percussion wall gun.
Now the wall gun is kind of the early version of the anti-materiel rifle.
Been around for a couple hundred years. There are matchlock versions, flintlock versions
and then percussion versions like this one.
And this was actually not that difficult of a type of weapon to make with these early ignition systems,
because, you know, today you'd have to design some new cartridge to fit an oversized gun like this.
Like for example, well, any number of the anti-tank rifle cartridges that we saw around the early 1900s to mid-1900s.
Well, before that, before you had self-contained cartridges,
all you had to do was make a bigger projectile and pour more powder in the back,
and then make sure that you've got enough material in the action to safely enclose the whole thing.
So ... when these were used, they were typically used as defensive arms.
Primarily to mount on say rampart walls, fortification walls.
In this case you can see we have this pivoting spike here, which allows you to drop the gun easily into a pintle.
You can then swivel it around, you don't have to try and carry the thing,
you don't have to try and hold it up while you're aiming with it. This is a heavy gun, this is
33 pounds this one in particular. And there are examples that were much heavier, up to like 50 pounds.
And what this allowed you to do was fire a much larger and heavier projectile than you could do
with a typical shoulder rifle. So it really had the same sort of combat role as todays anti-materiel rifle,
when you wanted to hit something a little farther away maybe,
or you just wanted to hit something that might be a little more durable than you could destroy with a typical
rifle or musket bullet. Now this particular one was manufactured in Liège, Belgium.
We know that from a number of the stampings on it. If the cartouche on the buttstock is to be
trusted, which I don't see why not, it was manufactured in 1866,
which would put this right at the end of the percussion gun era for this sort of thing.
Now, wall guns would continue into the cartridge era. For example, one of the more commonly accessible ones
is actually the Chinese, what's commonly called a "Jingal", wall rifle.
Those are made in .60 and .75 calibre. This one, by the way, is .75 calibre.
And what's actually also really interesting is that it uses hexagonal Whitworth style rifling.
Pretty cool, we'll take a closer look at that in a minute.
Anyway, the breech system is pretty unusual and interesting
so I definitely want to show you that because ... that's really cool.
And of course neat to take a look at something huge like this. Ye olde Barrett, I suppose.
Alright, let's take a closer look at the breech.
So the breech block on this thing is massive, which it would need to be
to safely contain the rather huge powder charge that this would use.
I don't know exactly what that charge would be, but substantial.
So in order to open this we're going to put hammer at half cock.
That is where you would place a percussion cap to fire it.
Then we're going to take this lever and pivot it out,
you'll notice it has this flat spring here to put some tension on the lever,
that holds it either in the open or the closed position.
Then I can lift the lever up and we have this, which is ... basically just a spacer block.
Once that's out of the way, then I can push the breech block back and pull it out.
(Without tipping the gun over.) And this is literally just a huge square block of steel that has a chamber in it.
So you'd fill that up with powder. Exactly how deep I don't know,
but it goes all the way back there to the percussion cap nipple.
You've got the handle here just to hold onto the thing.
And then this empty hollow shell of a receiver that it sits in, so.
So once the breech block is removed you can put your powder charge in there,
you would manually insert your projectile here because it is hexagonal.
The idea with hexagonal rifling was that you're not deforming the projectile to cut grooves in it.
Instead, you're taking a polygonal projectile that will be forced to rotate but not deform in the process.
Because of that your projectile basically fits your bore size, so you manually load that in there.
You've got your powder charge here. You'll notice that this breech block nests inside there, that's going to give it a bit of a seal.
Put that in, push it forward.
With the breech forward you can then close that spacer. That's going to prevent the breech block from moving back or forth,
then snap the lever down
like so, locked in place, put on a percussion cap, and then
you're ready to fire.
So our rear sight is actually pretty typical, same sort of thing you would see on a normal sized rifle.
We have an elevator here. You can move that to any range between 400 and 1,300 metres.
If you want to shoot closer than that, you have metres here on the side,
100, 200 and 300. And for those you use this slider to hold that rear sight bar up.
That's going to move this sight to where you want it.
And then if you want extreme range, that 400 to 1,300, you lock this bar in the upright position,
like so, using that V notch as your rear sight, or for the maximum possible range this ... V notch at the top.
The front sight is a pretty typical standard triangular front post. A couple of little protective wings on it.
Not adjustable at all, in fact the sights on this are not adjustable in any way.
Presumably it would have been zeroed at the factory.
We don't have a whole lot in the way of markings here, but we do have a date on the barrel,
which is a very good reference, 1866. And then we have a couple of proof marks
and manufacturer's marks here on the flat of the barrel.
Similar manufacturer's little cartouche on the front of the stock.
And then what is definitely the coolest marking on the whole thing, which is this cartouche on the back of the buttstock on the side.
Which is going to say
Manufacture d'Armes, Liège, '66.
This thing is here to serve as a pistol grip.
You might ask why did they put pistol grips on this thing?
You know, nothing else at that time had a pistol grip. Well, the answer is the stock on this has to be
remarkably thick in order to sustain the recoil from a rifle this size.
And it's too thick to effectively wrap your hand around and get an effective grip.
So they put a pistol grip on it, which you can hold this way.
Also keep in mind that because this thing is mounted on a swivel or a pintle or otherwise
supported by something like this, the grip isn't as important, you're not using it to really
support the rifle so much as just to point the rifle in the proper direction for aiming.
Something like this is doing all the actual support.
We get a cool view of the hexagonal muzzle here. That is the rifling. What you do is cut the bore hexagonally,
and then twist it ... as you're proceeding down the length of the barrel. So the bullet isn't actually being deformed,
but if you put a hexagonal bullet into a hexagonal profile bore like that,
you will force it to spin and get all of the beneficial effects of rifling.
Thank you for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
These are cool guns to look at, and they don't show up all that often.
Their coolness is often outweighed, literally, by the fact that they are massive and heavy guns
and difficult to move around and display, and so they don't turn up all that often.
If you'd like to own this one, reinforce your collection display rack and then
put it out to show people, well, take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to Rock Island's catalogue page on it. You can read their description and
see their pictures, and place a bid on-line or over the phone, or participate here live at the auction.
Thanks for watching.