Antique firearms and furniture

Antique miniature weapons

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Antique miniature weapons

Hello again people, today we are going to talk about antique miniature weapons (or mini-guns as i call them), an enjoyable topic. Is interesting to know that miniature firearms started to be interesting since 19th century. Some famous examples are the miniature Colt revolvers and many flint-lock and pin fire pistols (these are my favorites). These weapons could even be worn on a watch chain, and sometimes ladies from the upper classes would wear them as earrings. The more exclusive firearms were mostly made as complete sets, in a beautiful wooden case, with a powder flask and even little tools to make bullets, etc.

The most of these guns were made by apprentices to qualify for the big gunsmiths guilds. The most of these miniature replicas of firearms can be found in museums such as the Hermitage in St. Petersburg or the Metropolitan in New York. Miniature firearms are still produced today, for example by the Canadian Knife and gunsmith Yvon Vachon. Some of his products are described here. The prices for these miniatures can be high, especially if the sets have all the pieces.

The great English knife pistol from Yvon Vachon

Yvon Vachon English knife pistol Its most interesting feature are the hammer and the safety catch… wich are 10k gold. This beautiful weapon is a combination of a stiletto and a percussion pistol with a lenght of 1-3/8″(34.9mm). The larger blade is the stiletto, the smaller one is regular folding blade. Both have been made of ATS-34 steel.

Its handle has been made of African Blackwood. It has a compartment for storing the bullets. The case is ebony. It has a stainless lock with two 10 k gold keys.

Yvon Vachon reproduction of the Unwin and Rodgers percussion knife pistol of 1845

Yvon Vachon reproduction of the Unwin and Rodgers percussion knife pistol of 1845Ok, just look this beauty, is an amazing miniature of an original knife pistol produced by Unwin and Rodgers in 1845. The scale of the reproduction is 1:4, its length is 1.63″ (41.3mm).

The handle is buffalo horn and has a hidden compartment to store the bullets. The set is housed in a snake wood case.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 1:02 am and is filed under Antique Firearms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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