Thanks to all of you for your comments. While I appreciate your kindness, I am distinctly aware that the quality of my work, especially from 2002 when I started building guns again after a 25 year long hiatus, pales in comparison to Acer’s and Dave Person’s and Don’s and…….pick any one of hundreds of talented makers. I cite Dave’s “Hector and Achilles” pistols and Acer’s recent “faire gonne” postings and rest my case. However, I build for myself and am content that I am improving, mostly by watching the examples posted on this site and exchanging information with those of you I have met here. Nonetheless, I am at a disadvantage being out here in the far West. There just aren’t many builders out here to interact with and very few places to go look at and handle any originals.
Just after I built this blunderbuss in 2002, I discovered, by accident, that John Ennis lived literally around the corner from me. (He has since moved to Utah). Now John had built some of the most beautiful guns I had ever seen and I was very excited to talk to him and ask for honest critique on this gun and a couple of others I was working on at the time. I went to see him and he was extremely helpful. His first comment about the blunderbuss was, “well…there is enough wood left on the stock to build a second one of these !” He then showed me several original guns he had to point out how little wood a good maker left to hold all the parts together and how graceful that made the finished arm. We talked about architecture, engraving, finishing, inletting, all the details I could think to ask him about. I learned more in an hour talking to John than I had been able to learn on my own in years.
To answer Don’s questions: I wrote an article about this gun for Muzzle Blasts magazine several years ago explaining how and why I built it. For space reasons, the article got hacked way down and the thread of the story line was lost. (I can post my original unedited text, if anyone is that interested). The bottom line was that I had always wanted a blunderbuss, couldn’t afford one, so I built one. I built it just for me and, as a contemporary builder, was not particularly concerned with making it look like any particular original in all details. On top of that, I was not knowledgeable enough at the time to know what I should or should not do. The worst part was trying to decide what to try to engrave on it. I didn’t want to go too far afield and make it look way out of place, but I really had no idea where I was going with the engraving design. Since I had been a naval officer for more than a quarter century (and blunderbusses were often sea going weapons) I settled on using design elements from my 1976 USNA class crest and the Naval Academy crest. “Tridens” is part of the Naval Academy motto, “Ex Scientia, Tridens” - “From Knowledge, Sea Power”. “Tridens” can be loosely translated as “power” but has a nautical connotation as in the “trident” emblem of the Roman god of the sea, Neptune.
As for the word “Liberty” engraved on the side plate, I will answer with the last paragraphs of my original MB article (which, I believe, were deleted for political correctness reasons):
“We had great fun that day and shot away a considerable amount of powder and lead with the blunderbuss and a half a dozen other guns. As I watched the others shoot, I had to reassess my earlier thoughts about building something I really didn't need. The blunderbuss itself was just so much brass and wood, flint and steel, but what it represented to me now was something I do need, something I cherish. On the side plate I had been inspired to engrave the word "LIBERTY". It was not very original and my engraving of the letters was more than a little shaky. But as I watched the gun roar out again and again, I reflected that we all still enjoy the liberty to build or own or do something we don't need. Like our forefathers, we still don't have to seek permission from some higher authority to do many of the things we want to do whether we have a reason or not. We can follow our hearts and our abilities and our opportunities wherever they may lead us. In the most recent film version of Last of the Mohicans, Hawkeye is explaining to Cora why a slain frontier family would have chosen to live so far from civilization. He tells her that to be free and "not livin' by another's leave" was worth everything to them.
But with each exuberant thundering of the blunderbuss, there echoed a distant warning. Much of the freedom our predecessors held dear has already slipped away. Throughout human history, liberty, like glory, has been fleeting. We, as Americans, have enjoyed more of it for a longer period of time than any nation on earth. But, as the saying goes, eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.
For those who enjoy muzzleloading arms, we re-create, we re-enact, we re-live a time long since past, and, in so doing, we remember and honor the lives and courage of those who preceded us. Each time I do something I enjoy - shouldering one of my guns, teaching a young person how to shoot - I give thanks to Providence for being born in this land. And every time I hear a politician, or another of my countrymen, tell me I don't "need" one thing or another and, therefore, have no right to it, I bristle. Thanks for your input, but I can decide for myself if I need an SUV, a semiautomatic .22 rifle, a cigarette, or a greasy fried hamburger….or perhaps, even a blunderbuss. So, I hope that the answer to my friend's rhetorical question, "What are you going to do with that?" always remains, "Whatever I please."
Eternal vigilance, my friends. Eternal vigilance.”
