British reporters are calling it a “bomb,” but it is clearly a small Naval artillery shell. Too bad no one bothers to identify it more specifically.

Daily Mail:

When a friend out diving found a foot-long lump of metal on the seabed, printing firm boss Jeff Hayes decided it would make an ideal paperweight.

For the next two years it sat on his desk as he chatted to his 150 employees – blissfully unaware that it was an unexploded bomb from the First World War.

It was only after the firm went into administration that the office landlord arrived with a friend who is a weapons expert and they realised the truth.

The pair gingerly carried the bomb out of the building and placed it in a flower bed before calling 999. ..
After inspecting the device, two soldiers from the Army bomb disposal unit placed it in the back of a truck and drove it to their base in Powick Hams, Worcestershire, where it is understood a controlled explosion took place.

The landlord, Clive Parks, had been touring the empty building with his friend Jon Williamson.

‘I saw the bomb on the desk and thought, “That looks dangerous”,’ said Mr Williamson. ‘I shoot so I know about firearms, it still had a live detonator and the explosive TNT was exposed.

‘We phoned the managing director and told him and he said, “I cannot believe it is dangerous, it was given to me by a friend of mine”.’

Mr Hayes, 42, refused to comment yesterday about his potentially deadly paperweight which was found on the seabed in the Solent.

But a close friend, Jon Parvin, said: ‘Jeff’s had it on his desk for ages and never realised it could go off.

‘You’d expect a shell that had been submerged under water for the last 90 years or so to be defunct but apparently this one still had a bit of bite to it.’

A fire brigade spokesman said: ‘There was TNT still left in it. If the managing director had put his feet on the desk after a hard day and accidentally knocked the shell on to the floor with a big thud, who knows, it may well have gone off.’

Jefferson Davis’ .44 (.54 bore) Kerr’s Patent Revolver

A Kerr’s Patent Revolver with provenance indicating that it was one of two presented by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the commander of his personal escort, Captain Given Campbell, Duke’s Cavalry Brigade, May 4, 1865, shortly before Davis’ capture by Union forces is being offered for sale by Ziern-Hanon Galleries. Not cheap, but quite a piece of history.

More photos.

Model 1841 12 pound Mountain Howitzer

This web-site explains how to hunt white-tailed deer using a Civil War-era Model 1841 12 Pound Mountain Howitzer.

This method of hunting seems likely to provoke criticism, but, after all, the hunter is restricted to a single shot before having to undertake an elaborate and time-consuming process of reloading. There can be no second shot at the same target. And just look at all the effort required to transport, maneuver, and aim the weapon! Besides, the unreasoning prejudice of today’s authorities toward any kind of seriously innovative approach to reducing game to possession makes the project still more sporting by introducing a distinct note of hazard for the sportsman.

If the idea makes you squeamish, or you start getting all liberal and statist, just repeat after me: Rats with hoofs! Rats with hoofs!

I do kind of think myself that a real artillerist could get his buck with an exploding shell, and someone really good could do it with solid shot. If those darned Civil War cannon were just a little cheaper…

Run for your lives!

Private Sam Wilson’s Walker Colt and flask

The all-time auction record for a Colt Revolver was made his week at James D. Julia, Inc. in Fairfield, Maine, when a Colt Whitneyville Walker, marked “Company A #201,” issued at Vera Cruz in 1847 to Texas Ranger Private Sam Wilson sold for $920,000.

Samuel Colt produced, between 1847 and 1849, roughly 1100 massive .44 caliber revolvers along the lines suggested by Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker.

The Walker Colt could be argued to have been the most powerful handgun in the world up until the introduction of the .357 Magnum in 1935. Its use by Texas Rangers in the Mexican War and in frontier battles with the Comanche Indians combined with its rarity and extraordinary size all combine to make the Walker Colt the ne plus ultra of 19th century collectible revolvers.

Antique and Auction News explains why this particular example was so desirable.

With the Wilson/Kenly Walker there are some specific attributes that make this example stand far above all others known. First of all is its spectacular condition. The Walker was so revered during its period of use that one of the first actions that occurred as a Texas Ranger fell in battle was the retrieval of his Walker pistol. The thousand martial Walker pistols originally produced saw a tremendous use in future years. Those few examples that have survived are almost all in extremely worn and well-used condition. Very rarely is there even a hint of finish left on the revolver. It is not uncommon to find many or most of the markings worn off, parts replaced, etc. The Wilson/Kenly Revolver, however, is in extraordinary condition, retaining 40-60% of its original finish, and of equal importance, retaining all of the inspector marks, proof marks, and other fragile idiosyncrasies almost never seen on other surviving Walkers. This resulting masterpiece literally makes it a reference study in what a real martial Walker looked like at the time of issue.

A second very appealing aspect of this important revolver is its impeccable provenance. The gun was originally issued to Samuel Wilson, a private in the Texas Rangers. Not only is it recorded that the Walkers were issued to his Company, Wilson also scratched his name on the brass trigger guard of this most prized of his possessions. Wilson unfortunately died in late 1847 or early 1848 at Jalapa and Major Kenly, at that time Jalapa’s Garrison Commandant and in charge of the hospital, obviously obtained the gun at Wilson’s demise. He kept this and other items he collected throughout the battle for his entire life, and passed them on down to his descendants. The consignor, an octogenarian from Libby, Montana, first saw the gun in 1941 when he and his mother retrieved it along with the Walker Flask from the family homestead. It had been in the possession of his mother’s aunt (Kenly was a great-uncle to this aunt). The Colt Walker A Company No. 210 has never been outside the family, nor ever offered for private sale before. October 7, 2008 will be the first time. The Walker will be offered with a $500,000 to $1,000,000 pre-sale estimate.

James D. Julia press release

Maine Morning Sentinel story

Shooting a replica Walker Colt 9:01 video

Here is a recent acquisition: a boar spear blade made by
Bodraj of Aurangabad, one of the preferred models of blade used for Pig-Sticking, the finest sport in Asia, by British officers and colonial administrators in the pre-WWII days of the Empire.

(Click on the above picture for more. The link goes to another web-site I use for image and file distribution. I plan to post more photo collections of antique weapons from my personal collection from time to time.)

Sir Robert Baden-Powell describes it, thusly:

The Bodraj head is a flat oval blade tapering to a point. It is 4 inches long, three-quarters to 1 inch broad at the widest part, with a neck and socket of 4 inches long ; a projecting rib runs from point to socket along the centre of each side of the blade, standing about one-sixth of an inch, and sharpened along its back. This head is particularly adapted for use in Pig-sticking Cup Competitions.

“Snaffles,” The Finest View in Asia, 1928

A copy of Bashford Dean’s Catalogue of European Court Swords and Hunting Swords including the Ellis, De Dingo, Riggs and Reubell collections, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1929 would probably cost you more than $500, if you could find a copy for sale. This web-site offers a complete scan of the entire catalogue.

Bashford Dean:

It is fair to say that court swords, which came into vogue during the second half of the seventeenth century, were of extraordinary merit as objects of art. They were beautiful in lines, rich and varied in ornament, designed by distinguished painters, engravers, and medallists; they furnished even a brilliant point of interest in the court circle of baroque times – giving the final touch to the personal equipment of the courtiers of the Louis in France, of the pretentious nobles who thronged Italian palaces, of the ceremonious magnates of Germany and Poland, or of the wealthy lords and commoners of England. In fact, there can be no question that as an object of personal adornment a sword of the richest type occupied a high place in the minds of many personages of those days; we have only to examine their state portraits to be convinced that this “side-arm was receiving great attention as an object of beauty. We may even infer that many a seigneur who sat for his portrait was as keenly interested in recording for posterity the details of his sword hilt as the features of his face. ...

Hunting, which formed no small part of the social life of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, developed épées de chasse, couteaux, and coutelas, which were in keeping with the rich hunting costume and with the dress sword. They were short, carried from a hunting belt, and while they were often provided with guard, quillons, and knuckle guard, they never had the pas d’âne, since this was a structure belonging only to fencing (see fig. 7, which indicates types A and B). In a word, they represent decadent swords, small enough to be conveniently carried in the forest, to be used on very rare occasions to defend the wearer (very ineffectively) from enraged boar or stag, daintily to bleed the game, but never to function in butchery. The art of chopping up the animal – maitrise de veneur of the preceding century, of the days of Maximilian, Charles V, Henry VIII, Francis I – now belonged only to the court butcher and his attendants. Hunting knives (1) stand therefore on another line of descent; they developed from knives, becoming heavier, broader, more specialized. Hunting swords, on the other hand, are degenerate court swords, which by loss of structures attain nearly the condition of glorified knives. Hence it follows that the older hunting swords resemble more closely the short-sword of the period; while the later hunting swords are knife-like. But even here, where the blade becomes single-edged, it is still slender, pointed at tip, and its hilt ever bears the quillons of a sword; its scabbard as well is that of a sword with similar mounts. In style and ornament it still retains close kinship with the court sword – which was apt to replace it so soon as the owner changed his costume.

The late G.E.P. How enjoyed great wines, opera, fishing, shooting, edged weapons, beekeeping, cricket, cars, and mastiffs.

On July 25, Bonham’s at its Knightsbridge branch will be auctioning Arms & Armour from the collections of the late G.E.P. How and others.

The London Times said in its obituary of Mrs. How:

Mrs G. E. P. How, silver expert, was born on January 2, 1915. She died on June 26, 2004, aged 89.

A legend in the art world almost as much for the startling trenchancy of her utterance as for her impeccable scholarship and taste, Mrs. G. E. P. How was perhaps the last surviving link to the heroic age of antique dealing before the war, when great discoveries were made and dealers were becoming more than mere merchants of curios. Mrs. How stood out from the first by her scholarly energy and integrity, and she became one of the most influential dealers of her time. ...

Jane Penrice Benson was born in 1915, the posthumous daughter of an officer killed in the war. The family had been based in South Wales, though she herself grew up in the Home Counties. Her early ambition was to be an archaeologist; it was accidentally transmuted into silver when a neighbour suggested that she would enjoy helping to catalogue his collection of early spoons. (The fascination of spoons is that they are the only form of silver to survive in any quantity from the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance; without them it would be impossible to map the early history of the craft.) The expert she was to assist was Commander G. E. P. How, RN (retd), who turned out to be a jovial gentleman dealer with some considerable knowledge and a not entirely unpiratical bent. It was not long before the young Miss Benson was enthralled by man and subject alike.

The Ellis catalogue on which they worked is still a useful reference book, and Miss Benson moved to work with George How, and eventually, after his divorce, to marry him. The Commander and the Commando, as they were soon known, threw themselves into new research, living, breathing and in some cases sleeping with their spoons. ...

As dealers, the Hows were a new breed, coming from a background very different from that of the traditional silver merchant, and they owed a lot to their contacts, to their social ease and an unquestionable sense of gentlemanly integrity. Their shops were fitted out to look like a collector’s drawing room, and indeed they held open house in the evenings for collectors to come to talk about silver. The Hows also offered more intellectually than much of the competition. They were among the first to persuade collectors to insist on the highest quality and untouched condition, however modest the piece. The greater importance this placed on the historical value of silver appealed to discerning customers, even of small means, and to museums here and in America. ...

(Her) pugnacity could make her seem a fearsome, if diminutive, figure, especially when encountered on the serious ground of silver. But though few were spared the rougher edge of her tongue, no one could be in doubt as to her enormous underlying generosity. No serious scholar was ever refused help, and her personal kindness was great, if discreetly performed.

And she could be compelling company, with a great sense of the pleasures of life. Her offices, particularly the Queen Anne houses in Pickering Place behind Berry’s in St James’s, were glamorous in a peculiarly Dickensian way, with a creaking cage staircase and an Ali Babaesque twinkle of precious metal. To see silver gilt cups gleaming against cherry-red velvet in the sombre drawing room was an irresistible invitation to any sensual collector, and the lucky were further treated to a view of her own collection of spoons and early rarities. Parties at Pickering Place were equally fulfilling, with Mrs. How uncorking bottles of champagne apparently larger than herself. Little else except smoked salmon or caviar would be on offer. Great wines, opera, fishing, shooting, edged weapons, beekeeping and cricket were all enjoyed to the full.

Cars were a passion “I wear a car,” she said — and well into her eighth decade she sold a beloved silverplated Jaguar SS100 to Alan Clark in order to buy the latest Bentley Turbo, with which she liked to burn off all-comers at the lights. Anyone overtaken by her was liable to a fright, since she was so small as to be almost invisible at the wheel. By way of balance the back of the car was usually occupied by terrifyingly outsize dogs. She helped to save the Old English mastiff from oblivion, and one of her proudest achievements was to have won best of breed at Crufts twice with her dog Don Juan. Characteristically, she refused to show him again, as she did not want to prevent others having a decent crack at the title.

A sample item:

Lot No: 123

A Viking Sword Of Petersen Type M And Wheeler Type I
9th/10th Century
In excavated condition, with broad pattern-welded double-edged blade, tapering flat pattern-welded tang, cruciform hilt comprising short flat ovoidal cross, and shorter pommel en suite surmounted by a flat rectangular button
76.3 cm. blade

Estimate: £10,000 – 15,000
Footnote:
See J. Petersen, De Norske Vikingesverd, Kristiania, 1919; R.E. Mortimer Wheeler, London and The Vikings, London Museum Catalogue: No.1, 1927, pp. 31-32, fig. 13, 1; and J.G. Peirce, Swords of the Viking Age, 2002, pp. 84-86

The press is reporting (a bit late) that the best surviving sword owned by Napoleon Bonaparte still in private hands was to be auctioned yesterday at Versailles by Osenat.

The sword is a Mamelukestyle saber, a form of edgedweapon which became fashionable in France and Britain after Napoleon’s Campaign in Egypt in 1798.

The future Emperor, then First Consul, reputedly used this sword at the Battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800.

Napoleon presented the sword after the battle to one of his brothers as a wedding present. It has descended in the same family for eight generations.

BBC

Fox News

1:42 video

Louis-François (baron) Lejeune, Battle of Marengo, 1801
Musée National du Château, Versailles, oil on canvas
1.8 m. x 2.5 m.
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Doubtless stung by NYM’s criticism for slow reporting, Fox News has stepped up with the results of the auction. The sword sold for $6.4 million.

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Hat tip to Frank. A. Dobbs.

17th century shamshir by Assad Ullah

Nature reports that scientists studying the technology of Damascus steel believe the material used in Arabic Medieval weapons may deserve to be regarded as an early form of nanotechnology.

Unfortunately, they seem to be unaware of the similar technology used in the Indonesian keris, or of the far more complex metallurgy of Japanese swords. And they are evidently unfortunately also unaware of the revival of Damascus steel-making by the late American knifemaker William F. Moran.

Think carbon nanotubes are new-fangled? Think again. The Crusaders felt the might of the tube when they fought against the Muslims and their distinctive, patterned Damascus blades.

Sabres from Damascus, now in Syria, date back as far as 900 AD. Strong and sharp, they are made from a type of steel called wootz.

Their blades bear a banded pattern thought to have been created as the sword was annealed and forged. But the secret of the swords’ manufacture was lost in the eighteenth century.

Materials researcher Peter Paufler and his colleagues at Dresden University, Germany, have taken electron-microscope pictures of the swords and found that wootz has a microstructure of nano-metre-sized tubes, just like carbon nanotubes used in modern technologies for their lightweight strength.

Read the whole thing.

Chemistry World

The Australian.

Dr. Robert Beeman, founder of Beeman’s Precision Airguns, has produced a fascinating paper on the intriguing question of the identity of the repeating air gun, mentioned 39 times in the expedition’s journals, carried on the 1804-1806 Voyage of the Corps of Discovery by Captain Merriwether Lewis.

Colonel Thomas Rodney, en route to the Mississippi Territory where he had been appointed by Thomas Jefferson as federal judge, met Lewis at Wheeling (now in West Virginia) on September 8, 1803, and witnessed a demonstration of the air gun, which he recorded in his diary.

Visited Captain Lewess barge. He shewed us his air gun which fired 22 times at one charge. He shewed us the mode of charging her and then loaded with 12 balls which he intended to fire one at a time; but she by some means lost the whole charge of air at the first fire. He charged her again and then she fired twice. He then found the cause and in some measure prevented the airs escaping, and then she fired seven times; but when in perfect order she fires 22 times in a minute. All the balls are put at once into a short side barrel and are then droped into the chamber of the gun one at a time by moving a spring; and when the triger is pulled just so much air escapes out of the air bag which forms the britch of the gun as serves for one ball. It is a curious peice of workmanship not easily discribed and therefore I omit attempting it.

Beeman concludes that the Lewis’ air gun must have been one of the 1500 air guns produced for use by the Austrian Army upon the design of the Tyrolean clockmaker Bartolomeo Girandoni between 1787 and 1801, when the weapon was withdrawn from service.

A repeating rifle capable of firing 22 balls from a pre-loaded magazine was a revolutionary advance, but this complex technology undoubtedly required more maintenance and care in operation than the ordinary soldier operating in the field could typically supply. Perhaps, also, threats from the French adversary of denial of quarter to troops found using this unconventional weapon helped bring about its withdrawal from service.

The Beeman article.

A Curious Piece of Workmanship by Joseph Mussulman.

Lewis & Clark demonstrating the airgun to the Yankton Sioux. Warren Lee, 2005.

There is write-up on a tsuba (Japanese sword guard) for which we are temporary custodian on Rich Turner’s Tosogu.com. This one has a nautical motif. Tosogu means Japanese furniture in general.

Outdoor Life reports Wenger is offering the ultimate pocket knife: a nine inch, two pound, Swiss Army Knife including every single blade and tool, all 85 of them.

Who doesn’t need a cigar cutter next to a bicycle chain rivet setter next to a golf divot repair tool? Wenger is on to something with this everyman’s gadget. It wouldn’t be a knife, though, without a blade, so Wenger put seven in the line-up. And it wouldn’t be Swiss Army unless it came with tweezers and a toothpick. (They’re included, too.)

Mr Richard Turner, one of Australia’s leading Nihonto collectors and authorities, has started a blog (Tosogu.com) devoted to the discussion of Japanese sword furniture which will undoubtedly prove of great interest to collectors and connoisseurs.

The first posting announces the exhibition at the Sukagawa City Museum in Fukushima of the collection of the tosogu (Japanese sword furniture) of the late Aotsu Yasutoshi, who left an extraordinary collection, assembled over seventy years of collecting, including some 420 tsuba (swordguards) of extremely high quality and aesthetic interest.

The current exhibition is available on-line. There is no translation, but the viewer needs only to click on the left/right arrows to navigate the site.

Ko-Katchushi (Armor-maker made) tsuba, probably mid-Muromachi (c. 1392-1467 AD) – design motif: snowflakes

William F. Moran, circa 1982

William F. Moran, a legendary figure in the world of custom knives, died yesterday morning in the hospital at Frederick, Maryland of cancer at the age of 80.

Born in 1925, on a family farm near Lime Kiln, Maryland, Moran began making knives as a ten year old boy working in a smithy on his father’s farm, using discarded tools as his source of steel. By his teenage years, Moran had learned the skills of tempering and heat-treating blades, and his homemade knives had already developed a local reputation for holding an edge.

By WWII, he was dividing his time equally between knife-making and farming, working out of a small shop he built from material salvaged from a ruined silo. Over time, Moran decided that he enjoyed knife-making more than farming, and in 1958, with knife orders piling up, Moran decided to sell the farm, and devote his full time attention to the production of custom knives. Moran built a permanent shop, a one room concrete block building, near Middletown, Maryland. He built his own forge using stones taken from the stone fences on his family farm.

The first (of three) Moran catalogues appeared 1959-1960. 21 different models were offered, including a couple of historical replicas, two kitchen knives, and a carving set. By the mid 1960s, there was a four year waiting list for a Moran knife. By 1972, the waiting list was nine years long, and Moran had stopped accepting down payments. By the early 1980s, there was a twenty year backlog. With the growth of the collecting hobby, the demand for Moran knives grew and grew to the point where Moran recognized that existing orders exceeded the number of knives he could possibly produce in the remainder of his lifetime, and he stopped issuing catalogues or accepting knife orders not much later. Naturally, prices of Moran knives soared to stratospheric levels in the collecting marketplace.

Bill Moran was one of only a handful of custom knifemakers in business before the rise of the modern knife collecting hobby, and he played a key role in bringing about a vast increase in the number of custom knife makers, and the even greater growth of the audience of collectors and connoisseurs needed to support that industry’s expansion. Public awareness of the existence of custom knives really began with articles published in sporting and Gun magazines in the late 1960s. Moran cooperated with the pioneer journalists, granting interviews and supplying photographs. Moran co-founded the American Bladesmith Society in 1976, and served as its chairman for fifteen years. In later years, he devoted much of his time to teaching forging and knife-making to a younger generation of custom makers.

Moran was one of the most important innovators in knifemaking. He was the first modern knifemaker to revive the craft of making Damascus steel blades, circa 1972, and shared his knowledge widely. He emphasized quality, and moved very early to an emphasis on artistic work over utilitarian production. When most makers were resorting to stock removal and stainless steel, Moran stubbornly continued forging his blades of tool steel. It is generally thought the superior sharpness of Moran blades was attributable to his own style of “convex edge.”

In 1986, William F. Moran was inducted into the Knifemakers Hall of Fame.

KnifeForum —Moran page at American Bladesmith Society

Some of the knives offered in the first Moran catalogue
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