This type of gun is a good reminder that all early guns, even mass produced ones, were one of a kind. Thats why all my scatch built guns are not copies of ant particular gun.
To my opinion this is more or less a gun converted to a gun for ilegal hunting. The decoration and overal quality implements that it was made for nobility first. The folding mechanism was attached later to shorten the size and make it packable in a backpack so the farmer, who were not allowd to go hunting at these times, can hide it. The gunmaker who made the conversion was an experianced one cos he didnt destroy the decoration and tryed to fit it in the existing gun. A nobleman of that time wont have the need for a folding gun cos he will have a servant with him for carrying and loading the gun. If this is the case this a very rare and unique one. At first if the administration catch one of these the would have destroyed it and mostly these conversions are made by unexperianced workers at home wich will destroy the decoration and beauty of the gun. Congratulations for the one who catch the beauty on the auction 😁👍👍 nice to see such unique guns here....
Decent theory, but that is not the case. There are quite a few of these out there. I do not believe they are converted from guns originally with solid wrists. Many examples have belt hooks, which this one has evidence of having previously.
I am sure you are correct in your assumption here Roger, there would be very little point in a Nobleman having a folding stock, he would not be creeping around in the woods after dark, but would be accompanied by servants that would carry everything for him, it also seems a bit pointless in having just the short part of the stock folding as this reduces the overall length by little, and it obviously was not made for a common person as this would have cost 5 years of any Peasants earnings in Italy. Chris B.
I wonder if the folding mechanism was put in later to get it to fit into a trunk for travel. Also I'd love to see one of these oval ended barrel blunderbusses fired at a paper target to see the effect on the spread.
It's definitely something that could have been done later, the make up of the hadware makes me think it's an older modification if not original, but it definitely wasn't done last week haha. I'm working on finding a fireable example to see the effect of the barrel on the spread, hope to find one someday.
The gun was surely made for a wealthy owner and that excludes poaching peasants. A lot of guns that could be taken to pieces or made shorter by other means were indeed used for illegal purposes. I, too, think that the folding mechanism was made for easier transport, like modern shotguns that can be unhooked at the breech. People often fired from sledges in wintertime and had short guns for that purpose.
Why would the ATF have issue with that? Is it not subject to NFA regulations because it employs a primitive ignition system identified as an exempting characteristic?
