Yard Sale Horn

[Cory Joe Stewart]

This is a horn a friend of mine picked up for me at Yard sale of all things.  My original intent was to get it usable again, which could happen.  The only reason I have not done that is this horn is soooooooo thin.  I can press it with my thumb and forefinger.  I do not know if it was originally scraped that thin or if it is just worn from use.  Probably a little bit of both. 












Cory Joe Stewart

[rich pierce]

Very cool. Likely made thin to begin with. I see a lot of contemporary horns Made to withstand being run over by a truck. The light weight of an original horn always impresses me.

[Kevin]

Very nice find.  Looks like the staple is set with the curve of the horn and not across it.

Thanks for sharing,
Kevin

[Cory Joe Stewart]

Very nice find.  Looks like the staple is set with the curve of the horn and not across it.

Thanks for sharing,
Kevin

You are right, it is vertical.

Cory Joe Stewart

[mr. no gold]

What a great find! Wow! Someone went to a lot of trouble to produce this, scraping it and then applying a nice butt plug with brass tacks. Thank you for letting us have a look at it. Was it me, I would find the yard sale site and ask the people if the rifle and bag are still around. Same as going into a gun or antique shop and asking about horns, old guns and such. I have done pretty well using this system and it only took me 60 years to figure it out.
Dick

[MuskratMike]

I want to shop at the yard sales in your area. All I find are old bent screwdrivers and leaky hoses.

[Notchy Bob]

Someone used a great deal of care in making that horn.  It's a beauty!

Here is a quote from William Drummond Stewart's Edward Warren:
"…an over-coat of white blanket with a hood, a leather belt, a broad-brimmed un-napped white hat, my ammunition, and a rifle; a tooth-brush and a mane-comb which I thought least likely to break, were in my pocket, a butcher-knife was in my belt, and an awl was attached to my pouch, which, with a large transparent horn of powder and a wooden measure hanging to it, completed my equipment.” (page 51)

The carved and engraved horns get all the attention, but I think it was commonplace back in the day to scrape powder horns thin enough that you could see how much powder was there.

I saw the orientation of the staple, also, and though it unusual.  Functional, though.

Thanks for posting!

Notchy Bob

[Tanselman]

I know some horns are scrapped thin...but the vast majority of horns I've handled over the years have all had solid walls and were not translucent. While a thin horn could help gauge the amount of power left, I'd bet most hunters "back in the day" could easily estimate the amount of powder in their horn simply by the weight or by shaking it...without the risk of a thin walled horn that could crack, or worse, rather easily when carried in rough country. Or maybe most of the thin walled horns did get cracked and that's why we don't see many of them any more.  Shelby Gallien

[Cory Joe Stewart]

I have found that certain color horns are translucent when held to the light regardless of thickness.

Cory Joe Stewart