Should I buy this "Brown Bess"?

[Gabbo]

Greetings,

Sebastian from Germany here.
I convinced my family to buy our father an original Brown Bess for his 60th birthday.
Problem is, no one here has any experience in black powder guns.

A few days ago, I saw this on an auction website:
"Brown Bess Musket - original"

Kal. 20mm - smooth - length: 138cm/54,33 inch.
"TOWER" stamp on the lock.
Corrosion on the lock and barrel. Restored.

Attachment 84521Attachment 84522Attachment 84520Attachment 84518Attachment 84519

My concerns:
- No engraving (crown, etc.) on the lock
- The proof marks are looking kind of blurred
- The overall length and caliber don't seem to fit to any model
- The dealer just wants approximately 750€/838$. This seems to cheap.

So what are the experts thinking?
Is this gun genuine and worth the cost?

Thanks
Sebastian

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Badger]

I think that is very cheap for an all correct original (non India Pattern) Brown Bess, although I'm not that familiar with market values for these nowadays ..

For comparison...

Here is a 53 pic photo montage of my own 1808 Brown Bess Tower Musket - India Pattern (click here).

It's all correct and all original parts (no repros). I've owned it for over 40 years …

(Click PIC to Enlarge)

Note that it also has the early cocking piece (not a full closed throat) like the one you're looking at...

You might want to try our Google CSE custom search engine located in the top right corner of the web site titled Search Milsurps.Com. It only searches our site using Google techniques and can be quite fast and more efficient then what other gun sites on the Internet utilize. For example, in your case, type in the words brown bess and see what happens. There are dozens of old threads with many with pictures that you might enjoy, covering various aspects of this topic.

Regards,
Doug

[Patrick Chadwick]

IMHO not an all-correct original. It may well be that all the parts are original. But the area around the touch-hole looks odd. There is a small projecting tube that does not line up properly with the pan, and there is remarkable unevenness around this vestigial tube.

The non-standard barrel length often indicates that the barrel was shortened, because of an excessively worn or damaged muzzle. And 20mm bore diameter sounds like extreme wear. The barrel is probably very, very thin at the muzzle end.

I suspect this might be a musket that was converted to percussion in the 19th. century, and then reconverted to flintlock in more recent times. What we are looking at is either the remains of the drum that was (probably) brazed onto the barrel when it was converted to percussion (so-called drum-and-nipple conversion), and which has been ground down to leave the ignition channel in the drum to serve as a touch-hole or an piece of tube welded in to replace a rusted-out touch-hole. Hence the mismatch with the pan.

That's about as far as I can go without a hands-on inspection. I think this gun has been advertised for a long time, as I keep a close watch on such items. It is not a bargain, and I would not buy it.

[Richardwv]

From the limited pics all I can assure you of is that it isn't an original Brown Bess. The stamping is inconsistent with the aged pitting.....which looks more like the instant aging done with acid splatter. The recesses of the stamps invite pitting by holding dirt and moisture, however the cleanest parts of the musket is the base of the stamps. We've seen this a lot coming out of Afghanistan, not that this process is peculiar to that region. I'd 99.99% agree that the barrel is a reconversion from a drum percussion conversion and the alignment of the pan/frizzen would tend to indicate that the barrel, lock and stock were not assembled together by any craftsman. Again, the pics leave a lot of questions, but all I can say with some certainty is what it is not.

[Gabbo]

From the limited pics all I can assure you of is that it isn't an original Brown Bess.

Damn.. ok. There goes dads dream gun.
But at least I learned a little bit about fake guns.

Thank you for your help, gentlemen.

[Gabbo]

First of all... I'm too stupid to find the edit button. Sorry guys.
Second, I found an alternative to the Brown Bess.

Attachment 84638Attachment 84639Attachment 84640Attachment 84637Attachment 84641

- Flintlock Pistol -
Overall length: 38 cm / 14,9 inch
Barrel length: 20,5 cm / 8 inch
Caliber: 15 mm / 0.591"

The lock marking is a lion stamp and a crown with the number three.
So, after I googled a few hours (mostly wrong), I found out, that this shoul be a british gun from the 19th century.

Opinions? And please don't say its fake...

[Patrick Chadwick]

No, I won't say it's a fake. It's genuinely put together from parts, a fairly genuine-looking lock with a barrel decorated by Ali Baba personally and a hand-carved trigger guard. All fitted to a doubtful piece of wood with a definitely home-brew pistol butt plate and ring. There are plenty of this type being offered on that online-auction site. And most of them are in the category "Khyber Pass Specials". The trouble with photographic evaluation is that many of them incorporate original parts as well as bits hammered out in the back yard.

I know it's hard to be disappointed again. But I also know what's on offer here in Germany pretty well. From my own experience, do not buy anything unless it is a) at a wallhanger price, or b) it is from a dealer who guarantees to take the gun back if it turns out to be fake.

In your first post, you wrote

Problem is, no one here has any experience in black powder guns.

If that includes your father, as the intended recipient of the present, are you sure that it is a wise idea to spend a lot of money on a supposedly genuine original, with the real risk of being fooled by a plausible-looking fake? There are a lot of good replicas around.

P.S: I just had a look at the complete set of photos in the online auction. It is clearly a (the word you don't want to hear) built round a plausibly original-looking lock.

[Gabbo]

If that includes your father, as the intended recipient of the present, are you sure that it is a wise idea to spend a lot of money on a supposedly genuine original, with the real risk of being fooled by a plausible-looking fake? There are a lot of good replicas around.

He's collecting black powder weapons for about 5 years now, so i would not call him an expert.
Point taken. I guess this was the wrong way to get him a genuine weapon.
Lets try another. We got a limit of 700€. Would you say, it is possible to get a original from a trustworthy dealer in the stated price range?

[Patrick Chadwick]

Originally Posted by Gabbo
We got a limit of 700€. Would you say, it is possible to get a original from a trustworthy dealer in the stated price range?



Yes, I have done so. I must qualify that: it depends on the desirability for collectors. So an all-original Charleville or Brown Bess - no. And any musket in good shooting condition - also no. But a non US/French/British musket - yes, with patience. Ditto for flintlock pistols. There are a lot of pistols about, as they were easily kept and then forgotten. It is regrettably so that fakes prevail in the world of flintlock arms. Especially since a licence is not required, so anyone can purchase one to hang on the wall.

BTW, does it have to be a flintlock? A very large number of serviceable muskets were converted to percussion in the 1820s-40s. An M1822T (the transformed - Transfomé - version of the classic French musket) will only cost a fraction of an original flintlock, and having been selected for conversion is possibly in better condition than most flintlocks.


As to dealers: good dealers know that they cannot be experts in everything, and are sometimes fooled by false claims made by the owner. Since they are usually working on a commission basis to save VAT, they often do not spend much time on checking what they have for sale. But good dealers will take back a gun that proves to be a dud.

So give yourself some time and do not let yourself be pushed into a hasty decision because of a fixed date, such as a birthday or Christmas. One learns by looking at duds - it took me 4 years to find an all-original, good-shooting Martini-Henry. In that time I must have seen enough wrecks and Khyber Pass Specials to equip a couple of companies, and learnt that an album full of photographs cannot replace a hands-on inspection.

Anyway, you have done the right thing in coming to this forum. There are a lot of sharp eyes studying what is posted here, and although no-one will give you a guarantee that something is original, based purely on photos, you may be sure that a fake will almost certainly be detected.

---------- Post added at 11:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:06 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Gabbo
We got a limit of 700€. Would you say, it is possible to get a original from a trustworthy dealer in the stated price range?


Yes, I have done so. I must qualify that: it depends on the desirability for collectors. So an all-original Charleville or Brown Bess - no. And any musket in good shooting condition - also no. But a non US/French/British musket - yes, with patience. Ditto for flintlock pistols. There are a lot of pistols about, as they were easily kept and then forgotten. It is regrettably so that fakes prevail in the world of flintlock arms. Especially since a licence is not required, so anyone can purchase one to hang on the wall.


BTW, does it have to be a flintlock? A very large number of serviceable muskets were converted to percussion in the 1820s-40s. An M1822T (the transformed - Transfomé - version of the classic French musket) will only cost a fraction of an original flintlock, and having been selected for conversion is possibly in better condition than most flintlocks.

As to dealers: good dealers know that they cannot be experts in everything, and are sometimes fooled by false claims made by the owner. Since they are usually working on a commission basis to save VAT, they often do not spend much time on checking what they have for sale. But good dealers will take back a gun that proves to be a dud.

So give yourself some time and do not let yourself be pushed into a hasty decision because of a fixed date, such as a birthday or Christmas. One learns by looking at duds - it took me 4 years to find an all-original, good-shooting Martini-Henry. In that time I must have seen enough wrecks and Khyber Pass Specials to equip a couple of companies, and learnt that an album full of photographs cannot replace a hands-on inspection.

Anyway, you have done the right thing in coming to this forum. There are a lot of sharp eyes studying what is posted here, and although no-one will give you a guarantee that something is original, based purely on photos, you may be sure that a fake will almost certainly be detected.