antique powder flask

[frenchman]

A friend showed me this antique powder flask , it's small size about 4 inches long. It has two chambers in the bottom one short and one long has you can see one cover is missing at the bottom . What did them chambers be use for . Lead ,patches ??

[mr. no gold]

I have a similar flask and didn't think much about it until a friend told me that they are French and were used with pistols for the most part. It was his conjecture that the bottom compartments were used to hold smalls, including flints. It made sense to me, so I pass it on for what it's worth. Nice find, thank you for showing it here.
Dick 

[Pete G.]

Spare bullets. The Colt Walker repo flasks have something similar.

[smart dog]

Hi Frenchman,
The flask you show is called a "3-way" flask because the upper compartment holds powder and the lower contain round balls and possibly flints.  Those flasks usually were included in cased sets of pistols.  The popularity of those flasks arose because during a duel, seconds loaded the pistols on site. It was not proper to preload the weapons before traveling to the dueling ground.  Thus, the cased sets had all the supplies needed to load and fire pistols at least for several shots.  Based on the style, I suspect your flask came from a cased set of pistols from continental Europe.  It does not look English IMO.

dave

[smart dog]

Hi Frenchman,
I am an idiot.  I have a lot of reference books and I forgot I had a copy of Ray Riling's powder flask book.  He has photos of that flask but provides frustratingly little info about the manufacturer.  Anyway, he associates the flask style with derringer-like small percussion pistols.  Consequently, the bottom compartments typically were set up as follows:

1.  The long compartment is for powder and the other is for balls, or
2.  If it has an upper powder chamber separate from the lower ones, then the two lower compartments are for balls and caps.

dave