Early (1700's?) Bullet Mold

RCrosby

Spent some time around Concord and Lexington, Mass. last weekend. At one of the historical sites there was a display of a Brown Bess and accompanying bullet mold. It was a near exact duplicate of one I've had kicking around since Hector was a pup.
A simple "scissor like arrangement; two pieces of iron joined by a pivot pin with a beveled recess to rear of the "ball chamber" that looks like it might have been used to cut the sprue. The outside is badly rusted but the inside of the mold itself is in good shape and should still make a decent ball of about .55 cal.
A poor description, I know, and I apologize, but I do have a great photo that I could email to anyone who might know something about this sort of thing. I have yet to figure out how to include the pics in my postings.
Thanks,

rufe-snow

The problem you have with authenticating your bullet mold is with what is known as "PROVENANCE", i.e. you will have to trace it's prior ownership back to Revolutionary War times if you have any hope in establishing it as a original 18th Century artifact.


When I was into black powder stuff years ago, I remember Turner Kirklands, Dixie Gun Works Catalog use to sell modern handmade reproductions of stuff like that. They were made in India of all places, and were hard to tell from the 200 year old originals.






Here are instructions for posting photos.




First thing you need is a site to host your picture. What I mean by that is that you will need to upload your pictures to a web site that will host(display) them for you. You should not use your hard drive to host pictures for safety sake. Use www.photobucket.com to host your pictures.

After you have uploaded your pictures to the site that will host them for you(per their directions), the next thing you will want to do is go to the picture hosting site and view the picture. While you are viewing the picture, right click on it and you'll see another window that should pop up, now click on "properties" and copy the picture URL. If you know how to "copy & paste" this will be a piece of cake.

Now that you have the picture URL and your ready to post your picture. Do the following, use the following code except take out the "*" asterisk. The "*" asterisk is used here only so you can see the code. In other words if I posted the code without the "*" asterisk you will see a picture instead of the code. Anyways use this code to post your picture..
[*img]the picture URL goes here[*/img]

rhmc24

Above info is good. Value is from little to maybe $50 unless you can offer convincing 'provenance'. Suggestion: With good pictures, good wordy description,(as-is, uncleaned) post it for auction at a $10 starting price but with a reserve as high as it would take for you to part with it, say $200. It will probably get bid up to $20-50 which will give you a good idea what the market place thinks of it. Some one may see it as a real antique or just fall in love with it and offer a big number. Hope this helps.

Been there - Done that!