Proof marks?

[Nit Wit]

ID proof marks please.
Thanks
Nit Wit


photo download sites

[smart dog]

Hi,
I believe those are private Tower of London marks.  The Tower would proof barrels for private makers for a fee.  Many makers who did not have the privilege to use the London Guild's proof house, had the Tower do it.

dave

[Nit Wit]

Thank You
NW

[JV Puleo]

I'd like to see the rest of the pistol...they have the general appearance of Tower private proofs but something is wrong. For one thing, they are upside down. I'd be inclined to think this is one of the "fake" English pistols from Belgium. I say "fake" but they are old. All that I've looked at probably came in after the War of 1812 in the period 1816 to about 1820.

The Tower Private Proof was the Tower view mark struck twice so it's identical to the view mark on Ordnance accepted arms.

[smart dog]

Hi Joe,
I noticed they were upside down as well but I haven't seen enough originals with the marks to know if there was some variation in how they were stamped.  Also, the Tower service ended about 1810 did it not?

dave

[Nit Wit]

Thanks
NW

[JV Puleo]

The pistol looks fine.
Tower Private Proofs ended in November of 1804. I think the pistol is later but, not trusting the proofs, I don't see any way to conclusively date it. Another possibility is that someone has "improved" a perfectly good original pistol by stamping it with the fake marks available from a well-known supplier of black powder parts. Needless to say, I consider this an encouragement to fraud. Supposedly, they are intended for reenactors but I've now seen those marks on several otherwise unmarked originals, including one sword which only proves how ignorant some people are.

I'll add that I have many examples of Tower Private Proofs...let me see if I can find a picture to post.

[JV Puleo]

Here you go...
The 1810 date comes from an article by my friends John Evans and Brian Godwin. The actual date wasn't discovered until some time after it was published. They do make it clear that they were estimating...




I'll add a little here because it's a subject that isn't well understood.
Proof was only a requirement under law in London and its environs and even then it was on the sale of arms. The law was not extended to the rest of England until 1813. Both Scotland and Ireland were exempted and the law was not extended there until well after the flintlock period. The fact that most British guns are proved was a reaction to what the customer expected, not to a legal requirement. There was no requirement for proof on anything that was not going to be sold in Britain and that is clearly an "export grade" pistol, made to be sold out of the country.

[smart dog]

Hi,
Here (on the right) is another example of Tower proofs from the 1760s.






dave

[Nit Wit]

Thank you all for the education,
NW

[Adrie luke]

Try this one

https://www.nramuseum.org/media/940944/proofmarks.pdf

[JV Puleo]

That chart has been around for 50 years or more. I remember it being printed in Gun Digest in the 60s. It may be useful for later cartridge arms but it's virtually useless for anything before the breech loading era save the few exceptions where a mark continued to be used into modern times. The Tower Private Proof isn't there and at the time the chart was prepared it was believed that it was the private proof mark of the Ketlands. This was based on a mixture of conjecture and leapi9ng to conclusions by HBC Pollard whose early book on firearms included a lot of fanciful guessing and outright errors.