|
|
|
|
|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
I've been wanting to reproduce this gun for some time now, and I feel the time is right for it!
We have made a couple of changes to the gun to make it reenactor-friendly, but they keep well within the spirit of designing a reproduction as the original gun was a custom job and the changes could have been made in 1757 just as well as in 2007.
Please read the entire text below before asking tech questions about this prototype!
Want one of the first ones? Better get on Wendy's waiting list! Send her an email at orders@middlesexvillagetrading.com and ask her to put you on the list.
New pictures of the prototype, further along:
Click here to see photos of the original gun that this piece is copied from.
Here is the Ketland fusil story:
Circa 1990, I stumbled on to the original piece at a gun show, it was for sale for $125, and I got it for $100. It was missing it’s rammer, one thimble, the sideplate and the lock had been percussioned. Yeah, sounds like a wreck, but in the grand scheme of antique guns, for $100 that is still a great deal and quite restoreable, since the stock hadn’t been cut back to “modernize” it in the 19th century like so many others. I began the restoration process, in that I removed the drum and fabricated a touchhole liner for it. Then the project lay dormant for about a decade.
Around 1998, I got it in my head to build a copy of it to shoot. The resulting gun was a one of a kind custom that had almost $800 woth of parts into it. All of my friends saw it, and everybody wanted it. It is way lighter than a full-sized military musket. My copy was done with a 12-ga barrel, and I can hit a 3” gong at 40 yards with it.
A few years went by, and various people badgered me about doing a production gun based on the Ketland. I figured it’s time had come, so I began to work out the details. Two years ago, Mark Humpal (big time antique dealer in this area who specializes in original Native American stuff and colonial frontier stuff) came up with a gun that was nearly it’s twin at the Brimfield Antiques show! It too had been percussioned, but it was otherwise complete and had it’s sideplate, so we have a rubbing of it to see exactly what the engraving should be (a dragon). This same sideplate shows up in Hamilton’s book “Colonial Frontier Guns”, there are about 8 others known to exist, mostly from archaelogical contexts.
The original gun has a .53 cal smoothbore barrel, 36” long. It is not cut for a bayonet. For practical reasons, we are doing the production guns in .62 cal. If you are a reenactor, and the gun were made in .53, you’d have to make your own 70 grain cartridges because 100 grains is just too loud in a bore that small. If it is in .62, it is large enough that you can use “borrowed” cartridges mooched from other people in your group, casualties etc. The other change we are making from typical “Ketland” guns of the era is to add a bridle to the frizzen screw. This makes for a stronger, faster lock and makes mounting a flashguard soooo much easier. If someone wanted it to be 100% correct as a Ketland style lock, all he’d have to do is grind off the bridle and shorten the frizzen screw. It’s much easier to remove metal than to add it!
We feel that the original gun was custom made for an individual since there is so much cast-off to the butt. You can shoulder it and take aim using your left eye! The reproduction is being made with a straight stock.
In typical Ketland style, the barrel is marked “London” on top, but had Birmingham proof marks. Many Birmingham guns were marked London because it made them seem classier. Kind of like today when we pretend our cars and trucks are made in Detroit, but are really from Mexico and Canada.
We got quite a surprise when we removed the barrel from the stock. On top, the barrel is brown from age and handling, and we assumed it would have been bright when new. Nope. Under the woodline, the barrel showed it’s original blue finish! I had read referances to certain French guns being blued in the 18th century, and some English fowlers and shotguns, but never a paramilitary piece like this!
It has a Brown Bess style thumbplate, only scaled down to fit the gun. The rammer thimbles are sheet brass (repro will probably use cast thimbles). There is no nose cap. In looking at the spacing of the thimbles, there is a possibility that the barrel has been shortened as the spacing is not symmetrical. We are doing the repro of the gun “as-is”, compete with assmetrical spaced thimbles, as it is to be a copy of this particular piece.
This is a pet project for me, I have been on the fence about reproducing it for a long time and have spent a lot of time studying other Ketland pieces. I have another Ketland musket in my collection that has been converted to a halfstock and have also had the privilege of examining many original muskets made by the Ketlands in private collections and museums. Now it’s really happening, and soon you can have one too.
