Thanks for the input. I have no documentation for the canteen. You are right, the only way to really know the age is to test the wood. But in reality, that holds true with anything that we collect. I have seen longrifles that would appear to be from the late 18th or early 19th century, but were made in the past 20 years. The same goes for powder horns or anything else that we choose to collect. Based on that, all I can hope for is that decisions to buy or trade for an item, regardless of what it is, are done because the item has the correct "look and feel" for what it represents. We just use our best judgement at the time. Sometimes, experience is an expensive teacher, but that is part of the price for collecting. Since this is the first canteen that I have owned, I would like the opinions of others that have owned/studied/collected them before. I'm not into it very deep, so either way, I won't be upset. I don't think that the gentleman that I got it from tried to misrepresent it to me, but you never know. He said it was in his Aunt's family for a number of years and he really didn't know anything else about it, and I had no reason to doubt him. Again, I appreciate the input but would like to hear from others that have owned/collected items like this to see what they think.
