Identifying gun parts and gunflints

Flintlock furniture, trigger guards, and the knapped flints that fired them.

Musket and pistol fittings turn up wherever people lived after 1600: brass trigger guards, butt plates, ramrod pipes, side plates, and the occasional lock plate or cock (hammer). Military pieces may carry ordnance stamps, regimental marks, or broad arrows; sporting guns show engraved decoration.

The gunflint is its own find: a squared, wedge-shaped knapped flint, usually honey-coloured (French) or black (English), with a crisp bevelled edge. They look startlingly like prehistoric tools but are far more regular — a neat trapezoid in section, often with use-crushing along one edge.

Identify the part by comparing outline and screw holes against pattern references; record any stamp exactly. For gunflints, note colour, dimensions, and edge wear — a scatter of them marks a camp, practice ground, or flint-knapping trade, each worth a precise findspot.

From the guide library inside Collectors Catalogues, a free app for cataloguing antiques and finds with honest, museum-grade records.

More on weapons

Identifying arrow and spearheads — Socket or tang, and section.

Identifying axeheads — Stone, bronze, or iron.

Identifying swords and daggers — Blade, guard, and tang.

Arrowhead types by period — Flint barbs to iron bodkins — which arrowhead is in your hand?

Identifying crossbow bolts and quarrels — Short, heavy, square-headed — the crossbow's ammunition.

Identifying sling bullets — Lead almonds, some with messages for the enemy.

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