Snaphaunce pistol with ramrod

Snaphaunce pistol, a pair with A1193, the barrel fluted at the breech, the rest of its length polygonal, the breech and muzzle finished with narrow mouldings.

Lock. The cock is ring-necked, the comb chiselled and pierced with a design of scrolls and monsters, the flat surface of the neck engraved with foliage. The steel is similarly pierced and engraved. A stop-plate or buffer, affixed to the lock-plate to check the fall of the cock, is engraved and pierced en suite. The lock-plate has no decoration. The mechanism has a sear and a tumbler of flint-lock type, but lacks a half-cock notch.

Stock of walnut with pierced steel inlays in the form of foliated scrollwork. Fluted steel butt-cap. The rear lock-screw also serves to secure a belt hook on the left side. Fluted trigger-guard with acorn finial. Steel fore-end cap roughly engraved. Ramrod pipes pierced with foliage. Ramrod with moulded tip and steel toothed ferrule.

Italian (possibly Brescian), about 1660.

The tumbler operates a long, slender bar which slides to open the pan. An unusual U-shaped sear-spring is mounted above the sear, encircles it, and acts on its underside.

Gaibi, Armi da fuoco, 1962, p. 123 and pI. 121A; and Armi da fuoco, 1978, fig. 326; Blair, Pollard's History of Firearms, 1983, pI. 72.

According to N. di Carpegna, this form of sear-spring is not recorded in any firearm known with certainty to have been made in Brescia (letter of 19 August 1970).