Mongrel1776:

allen griggs

Would you take a look at this thread?

Looking for a flintlock pistol...would like advice

What the hell is the deal here? A pistol with a brass barrel! I have never heard of such a thing. I know the Rebs used brass receivers on pistols during the War of Northern Aggression.

Is this historically accurate? Why would someone make a barrel of brass?

mongrel1776

Very much historically accurate. What would be most inaccurate about Steeltoe's pistol is the fact it's rifled. That's a concession to modern-day demands for accuracy that for whatever reason didn't exist or weren't catered to, back in the day.

In the case of honest-to-God duelling pistols the lack of rifling was considered a sporting matter. The British (as demonstrated by their reaction to Colonial riflemen during the Revolutionary War) felt it ungentlemanly to take a crack at another gentleman with a gun that was most likely going to put its projectile precisely where it was aimed. I think this attitude might have been a vestige of the old custom of trial by combat, in which the will of God (which presumably guaranteed justice, AHEM) was considered to play at least as much a role in the outcome as the actual skill of the combatants (even when both noble contenders had champions doing the actual fighting in their steads....[;)]).

The French, FWIW, got over the gentlemanly opposition to rifling far earlier than the English, as demonstrated by a relatively large number of French duellers with finely-rifled barrels. Once upon a time the French actually were a fighting people, as the English and American Colonials re-discovered in the French and Indian War. If they hadn't gotten their s--- together and the French nobility hadn't paid so little attention and money to their colonial possessions, that war would have turned out much, much differently.

Anyway, yeah, to get this post back on topic, there were brass-barrelled handguns. See my response to the thread in question for probably more elaboration than anyone ever wanted.