A Very Rare Teppo Pill Lock

[Jean]

Here is a picture of it. I have others before restauration I will post later

[Viper6924]

That's a good looking and very interesting gun, Jean.

Yours and some of the other guns pictured in this thread gives me somewhat of a Sendai feeling. Two mekugi fixing the barrel to the stock. The "wire" trigger. The rear sight. The way the butt is carved and also that the barrel is placed fairly deep into the stock.

This style seems to have originated from the Tohoko-area during the Bunsei and Tempo era. As Ron wrote early in this thread, we have the gunsmith Katai Kyosuke Naotetsu from Shinshu credited with making this style of guns. Perhaps he used features from the Sendai style matchlock when producing this "upgraded" weapon. 

This gun is probably the result of the northern clans attempt to modernize their arms during the 1840s whilst the southern clans bought theirs (modern ones) from the west.

 

Jan

[estcrh]

Here is a picture of it. I have others before restauration I will post later

Thanks Jean.

 

[Jean]

Eric,

 

Thanks for rearranging the pictures. Any idea about the mon?

[estcrh]

Eric,

 

Thanks for rearranging the pictures. Any idea about the mon

 

Jean its good to finally have a larger sized image of the whole gun, thanks! The mon looks like a butterfly maybe? I do not have a clue but someone on the forum may have seen it before, you could try posting it in another category.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bugyotsuji]

The closest I can find to the Mon is a Gunbai "Kara Uchiwa in a thick circle". 太輪に唐団扇

 

The uchiwa came from China and became a battlefield pointer for generals such as Takeda Shingen.

 

According to various references, the most famous families who used variants of this were the Kodama, early on, and the Naito Murakami and the Okudaira. Also Yashima and Yoshino. You would need to consider which families were still active at the early half of the 19th century.

[estcrh]

Dear All,

It is a long, frustrating story but the Pill Lock Teppo will NOT be coming to Canada. French Post Office will not ship, UPS will not ship, FedEx will not ship, DHL will not ship. Only Purolator Courier were willing to ship. The parcel weighed less than 7 kg. I believe in actuality, it weighs 5.3 kg. All French Customs and Canadian Customs cleared. I thought finally ... Then Purolator Courier phoned to get my approval .... Freight charge to ship to Canada .... $ 2428.30 US dollars. Purolator said they would only ship to a Customs Broker in Canada, ... so I would also have to pay Brokerage fees. Just having it shipped to Canada was going to cost me far more than I paid for the gun.

I was then making arrangements to fly over myself and pick it up, ... bringing it back as personal CARGO luggage. This was fine, ... but another

$ 615.00 ( economy fare return ) it is an off season right after the New Year so I was able to get a reasonably priced air fare ... and this is not including incidental travel , and other expenses. There is also the worry about THEFT in Airport Cargo both in France and Canada as Air Canada said it would have to go in a locked gun case ( talk about an invitation to theft ). Since I could only afford to be away 3 days ... with counting time in Airport check in, actual time in flight it added up to 40 hours out of 48 hours given the time difference between France and Canada. My health is not up to that ( I doubt a much younger person's is ). Fortunate ( in a sad way ) for me, ... a friend in France bought the gun from me at my cost.

This issue of shipping has become nothing but a nightmare.

 

PS. The National Sales Manager for Purolator Courier ( based in New York ) was to call me .... I guess she never had the guts.

 

... Ron Watson

I am not sure why Ron had so much trouble having this gun shipped, maybe due to the gun being in France or his being in Canada but I just had two rather rare matchlocks shipped to the US with no problem, one from a dealer in Holland and the other from an auction house in Italy. Both guns arrived in cardboard boxes and were described as guns......the dealer and the auction house said there was no problem shipping antique guns. One was shipped by DHL and I can not remember who shipped the other one. So at least some European countries have no problem shipping antique guns to the US.

 

Now here is an answer for Ron from another post.

 

I have never examined a brass barreled Japanese gun ( except for the cannon I own and it was definitely cast ) ... normally a pistol, as I know of no long muskets having brass barrels. 

... Ron Watson

 

 

This is a bronze barreled Japanese long gun, the only one I have ever seen, 42.7in long and 20lbs. You can see how big it is when seen compared to other Japanese matchlocks.

 

 

[Brian]

Well..Jean owns that Pill Lock now, and I really hope he remembers me in his will :laughing:
It's a bucket list item for me...highlight of a collection.

[Bugyotsuji]

42.7 inches. Length of gun or length of barrel? Larger than any I can recall, and 9kg is definitely heavy. I wonder what the internal diameter is?

 

Missing Ron's input here, though.

[estcrh]

42.7 inches. Length of gun or length of barrel? Larger than any I can recall, and 9kg is definitely heavy. I wonder what the internal diameter is?

 

Missing Ron's input here, though.

Piers, I agree, Ron should be here, yes 42.7in / 108.458 total length, .75 in / 19.05 mm would equate to 11 monme I believe. With your access to Japanese sources possibly you have seen another long Japanese matchlock?????