Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at RIA with a pair
of extremely old and extremely fancy wheellock pistols.
These date from the late 16th century, which is to say
sometime between about 1575 and 1600.
These are over 400 years old, coming up on 450 years old.
They are from Saxony, and I don't have a whole lot of detailed information about them.
I can't tell you exactly who made them, or who they were made for,
but I bet you guys would be interested to take a closer look at elaborate,
royal, or at least high aristocratic, wheellocks from 16th century Germany.
Here are both of them side by side. It's interesting that they are even artistically duplicates,
but executed individually, and so they're not quite identical.
They're not machine made, obviously.
But there are a couple of things I want to touch on first.
If you're not familiar with the mechanical functioning of a wheellock
I have, I think, a pretty good video ... of an introduction to wheellocks,
including some shooting footage and some high speed, and it's pretty cool.
So if you don't know how this works I'll link that video at the end of this one,
you can check it out and see what's going on here mechanically.
I won't delve into that whole subject today.
The really big pommel on these is actually referred to as 'puffer' style,
which I think comes from some period phraseology, and I'm not quite sure of the etymology on it.
But the function was primarily to make this really easy to grab and pull out of the holster on a horse.
This is not a pistol that was issued to peasant conscript soldiers obviously,
this is something for the elite: royalty, high aristocracy, royal guards.
These sort of people are often on horseback, especially if they're carrying very large pistols like this one.
So, this allows you to drop the thing into a nice protective holster
that it won't bounce out of while you're riding around,
but then you've got this big feature that you can grab to pull the gun out easily.
You don't have to carry these things in holsters.
Should you want to just dismount off the horse and stuff this thing into your belt,
both of these pistols have belt hooks on them right there.
And speaking of features you might find on a gun today, we also have aperture sights.
On a pistol no less. So there are tubular aperture sights (you can see down there) on both of these pistols.
... Well, these are close to the oldest functional firearms I've ever seen or laid hands on,
which means this is, I think I can confidently say, the oldest aperture sight I have ever seen on a firearm.
Alright, but the art: the art is really what makes these things stand out.
And this whole thing is done in engraved stag horn, and this is a Germanic or Saxon style.
There are a number of other pistols in well-documented collections
that have a very similar style of embellishment like this.
So lots of little spirals and small features over literally the entirety of the gun.
Like, you wouldn't know that there's a wood stock under there if you didn't know it.
On the left side here, where we don't have a lock plate, there are a number of figures.
We have some dogs, some bears.
There's a bear and a dog. I think that's a pig, or a boar.
Another dog.
An anthropomorphically questionable dude there ...
he's got some kind of weird stuff going on with his shoulder sockets, but we'll leave him alone for a moment.
The scroll work continues up here, and then there's some
more decoration right at the front where you have the ramrod.
We've got a figure, kind of a classical figure blowing wind there on the bottom.
We've got a mermaid there right in front of the lock plate.
A couple of figures on the back of the gun.
And then the entire pommel is decorated, we've got a lot of heads and faces there.
Even the underside is decorated.
Really, really ornate work on all of this.
There are a couple of marks on the top of the barrel here that are probably
manufacturers or craftsmen's initials,
but I have no information as to exactly what those might signify, or who they might signify.
Now I mentioned that these two have the same design but individually executed,
and I think that's actually pretty interesting.
So you can see you have the exact same figures ... in the embellishment.
But if we look at these up close, no two of them are quite exactly identical.
Up here at the muzzle, for example, you can see we have the figure here with wind and waves,
and it's like they did this from a single design sketch.
But when the guns are actually made, all of this is being done very meticulously and very carefully by hand
because if you screw up a bit, you got to replace the entire piece of horn and start over.
So, some really talented, skilled craftsmen to do this 450 odd years ago.
One of the neat side issues to me that is relevant to pistols like these,
is the question of fakes and reproductions.
Because, first off, these are authentic.
However there was a substantial trade in the Victorian period
in fake reproduction wheellocks of this sort of alleged vintage.
Because during the Victorian period these things were a couple hundred years old,
and people looked at them as these very cool, very scarce, antique, high value collectables.
And so people started making reproductions of them, which at the time were passed off as real,
not always, but sometimes.
Just like today we have people faking some of the more desirable collectable firearms.
Think about especially World War Two sniper rifles,
very often faked, or built from some original parts and some not original parts.
Well, what's neat today is that those fake Victorian reproductions
are now over 100 years old, and those are interesting historical pieces on their own,
because of the context in which they were built. And so ... they're viewed in a different light now
because they're actually collectable in their own right even though they were, in many cases,
produced as fraudulent fake copies.
So, I think that's a really neat comparison to make, it kind of ...
I don't know, it gives an interesting perspective on collecting and authenticity. So.
Just to reiterate: these are in fact authentic 16th century.
One of these days I should actually do a comparison between an original one
and a Victorian reproduction, that'd be a neat video to do.
Anyway, what we have today is just a look at these two really pretty fantastic pistols.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
Thanks for watching.
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