Restoration of an old Boutet's flintlock pistol

[santos]

Hello everybody,

We have been staying at home for two months, so I had a lot of extra time and head a project of restoration of 3 old French pistols from Napoleon Bonaparte’s era.

I’ve found these pistols many years ago , on a flea market that we have every Sunday in the small villages here in France.



The pistols belonged to the same officer that served under Napoleon , and then under the “Gendarmes de la Garde” corps that was formed in 1820 by the king Louis XVIII when he turned back to the throne , once Napoleon was banned.



The early one was manufactured by Nicolas Boutet that was the Director of the Manufacture de Versailles . This pistol was certainly one of a pair , but the second one is missing.

The pair of pistols were made in Liege , first with flintlock action and then modified with cap and ball action around 1820. like this one in better condition than mine :https://www.anticstore.com/pistolet-gendarmes-la-maison-militaire-roi-1814-1816-restauration-77126P

When I bought them, they were very rusty and the wood worm-eaten : The most challenging was to make a new stock . It was the first time , and I’ve been busy with that. Sawing the French walnut, cutting it and inleting with small gouges is quitte a challenge for me




These pistol have only sparse engraving, I had just to clean it after sanding the barrel , the trigger guard, the side plate, the hammer and the butt cap. Just cleaning the cuts that the Belgian from Liège and the French engraver from Versailles made 200 years ago.




The head of the screw were not engraved , but I feel myself free to engrave them.


By chance there are some examples on internet , so I have good models for writing the markings with the same style .
https://www.anticstore.com/pistolet-silex-boutet-fils-versailles-xixeme-79285P
https://www.bertrand-malvaux.com/fr...-signe-boutet-type-an-xii-premier-empire.html

The marks were not stamped but engraved with hammer and Chisel : I’ve spend hours on internet viewing photos and writing the marks with a dip pen.

I love writing and trying to catch the style of the original engraver .
Here are the finished pistols :
https://www.gravure-couteaux.info/gravure armes collection/pistolets Corona (4).JPG
https://www.gravure-couteaux.info/gravure armes collection/pistolets Corona (5).JPG
https://www.gravure-couteaux.info/gravure armes collection/pistolets Corona (6).JPG

Since the school were closed here, we have to take care of our grand-children , so my grand-son was at home and he seemed interested on these old weapons. He helped me to take them to pieces. I’ve made a video to show him all the steps of the restoration.

Sorry it’s in French, I’m firing the flintlock pistol with no gun powder on the barrel . Now I can’t wait to go with my grand-son to the range and fire the pistol with some bullets . Merci beaucoup, Thank You for reading.
And keep safe and healthy

 

[FANCYGUN]

Oh do I love stories like this Thanks for sharing and congratulations on bringing back a piece of history
The most rewarding restoration I have done in this vein was restoring/rebuilding a Winchester 1873 One of One Thousand rifle a client gave me

 

[JJ Roberts]

Santos,Your doing a fantastic job restoring those flintlock pistol,I also like restoring classic firearms your metal & stock work is coming along really nice,keep up the good work. J.J.

 

[monk]

just a great thing to do, as well as an excellent result. thanks for taking the time to share your project

 

[speeedy6]

You referred to one of them as " the early one", I think that's funny when all are a couple hundred years old ! This is a very interesting post. Thank you, Mark

 

[Leland Davis]

Santos, nice job saving the historic pistol, I started out building and restoring flint lock rifles and pistols. You just wish they could talk and tell you where they have been. I found a hand written note on the wood under the patchbox it just told who the gun was made for and the date 1787. It was not made for anyone famous just a guy trying to feed his family.

 

[Goldjockey]

Travaux de restauration fantastiques! Vraiment détaillé et original à tous égards. Votre petit-fils se souviendra de cette expérience pour toujours et, espérons-le, la transmettra à ses propres enfants. Quelle merveilleuse tradition! Merci beaucoup de partager cela avec cette communauté internationale de graveurs!

 

[monk]

• santos: do you have any idea as to who may have engraved the guns ? some of the history buffs may want to know.

 

[santos]

Merci Messieurs , thank you for your kind comments

@FANCYGUN : I’d love to restore an antique Winchester one day…maybe next year, a friend has a 50 cal very rusty . The concern with this kind of job is that is very time consuming and the customers will be afraid with the price This is the reason why I mostly do restorations on my own arms.

@monk, JJ and Mark : thank You for your kind words

@flintdoubles : I love this kind of story . I watched a video during the WW1 of women making helmets , they write and hide a small piece of paper with a kind sentence for the soldier who will discover it one day

I did something like that , there is a small paper hidden around a screw for someone that will open the pistol on 200 years or so.

@Goldjockey : Merci Michael d’avoir pris le temps de me répondre en Français . C’est un plaisir de faire partie de cette communauté .

 

[santos]

• santos: do you have any idea as to who may have engraved the guns ? some of the history buffs may want to know.

Monk , after the French revolution, in 1793 a workshop for making guns was created in the Chateau de Versailles , the famous château built by the king Louis XIV

400 craftsmen were working at the Manufacture de Versailles and among them certainly 2 or 3 full time engravers . Sadly I never read any name of these engravers, most of their work was to engrave the mark or the number on the military guns .

Nicolas Boutet was the director and he designed certainly most of the ornaments , the design was then engraved by someone else, I don’t think he was an engraver .



During the Napoleonic wars , Bonaparte created La Legion d’Honneur and offered rewarding guns specially decorated to the most valiant soldiers . For the officers the pistols were highly decorated, with gold accents and a plate with the name of the battle and the Grade and name of the officer.
Here’s a rewarding sword made by the Versailles’ manufacture :
http://www.boutetparis.com/galerie323fr-armes anciennes-directoire-recompense.html


My pistol was not a rewarding pistol. Some officers buy their own arms from Versailles because this guns had a good reputation and a good accuracy for the time.

When I opened the screw on the but of the barrel, I saw they have machined 40 hair-riffled grooves since the pair built in Liège has a smooth bore.


One of the Versailles Carbines was used during the naval battle of Trafalgar to shot Napoleon's best enemy: Admiral Horatio Nelson.


Some of Boutet’s nice carbines and shotguns are now in America, have a look here : Rick is pronouncing correctly Boutet . The shotgun made by Boutet has SN 322 My pistol has SN 120 :

Do you think this is Gold inlay?
https://www.anticstore.com/pistolet-silex-boutet-fils-versailles-xixeme-79285P#gallery-4

Golden ornements on Boutet's were not made with the techniques of inlaying that we are using now days. They made an amalgam of gold and mercury and apply it on the engraving that was often etched, but there are many engravings lightly cut with a burin. They have certainly techniques for applying varnish masks to avoid applying the amalgam outside of the design.

Once the mask is taken out, the piece had to be heated, so the mercury will evaporate and let the thin layer of gold on the metal. That was a dangerous process for the craftsmen breathing the evaporated mercury. Certainly worse than a covid

The barrel was then blued for increasing the contrast with the gold accents.

Here are some examples : https://www.alamyimages.fr/photos-images/nicolas-noel-boutet.html


For the pair built in Liège , they have many very good Belgian engravers around Liège during the 19th century . There’s a very interesting website here with some engravers of 20th century . Armoury and of course engraving was an old tradition, and Leon Mignon’s school is perpetuating this tradition :
http://www.littlegun.be/arme belge/graveurs/a a graveurs fr gb.htm



I hope you enjoyed reading a bit of the history of these arms. I’m found of history and even more when three items with a common historic link come to my engraving vise:



I engraved late month a knife made by “Les Couteliers de Fontainebleau” , they asked a salamander , that was the emblem of the king Francis the 1st . This French king built a few famous castles like Fontainebleau or Chambord. He welcomed Leaonardo da Vinci and other Italian artists for decorating his castles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_I_of_France

The second item was a rewarding Medal for a shooting championship held in Le Havre that is a town founded by Francis I, his emblem and latin motto : Nutrisco et Extingo are in the armouries of this town.

My Boutet pistol was certainly in the Fontainebleau castle courtyard , just under Francis I salamander, during Napoleon’s Farewell to the Old Guard on April 20th 1814
https://www.historyplace.com/speeches/napoleon.htm

and here’s a nice painting depicting his Farewell:
https://www.napoleon.org/histoire-d...ntainebleau-a-la-vieille-garde-20-avril-1814/

Can you believe that I was engraving these 3 items the same day 20 April , 206 years after Napoleon's Farewell ???

The medal just need a light restoration: some jealous has stippled the engraving of the winner name : Le Vicomte de Lautrec .


An uncle of another famous painter of 19th century: Toulouse-Lautrec

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Toulouse-Lautrec

The engraver used mostly a small flat and an onglette, I like the 19th engraver's design


Voilà dear Monk, don't ask me to talk about history again please ... My wife says I'm like an ald juke-box, you put a coin and it plays , it plays ...

Thank you for reading

 

[Sailor]

Hello Santos - nice work. I am a norwegian antique gun collector and have several Boutet guns. And I am also trying to figure out his system for numbering the weapons from his hand or workshop - all archives after him had disappeared at his death 1833.
It would be interesting to learn if there are any numbering somewhere on metal pieces of the gun. There may be a number on the left side of the barrel, often hidden below the wood edge. I have one gun where the serial number 97 is stamped inside the butt cap and even on the short necks of the screws. I will try to enclose a couple of photos.
Any stamps or letters on top or/and under the barrel may tell who made the barrel, who was the controller and approximately when the barrel was made.
As for possible engraver, Boutets top assistant Louis-Marin GOSSET worked with him from 1788 until 1813 and was an excellent engraver, and was probaly the artist making many of the luxurious guns signed Boutet. Boutet was the main designer, and had at the most over 700 workers in his factory which he operated at his own risk. He was also a very good wood sculptor. His speciality was carving the grip in fish-shell pattern. Have enclosed a photo of a pistol with that type of carving.
GOSSET set up shop for himself in Paris when Boutet went bankrupt (not Boutets fault), and Gosset got several patents for percussion guns after 1818, and rebuilt many Boutet guns from Flintlock to Percussion.
You will also find this carving on a cased set of de luxe pistols that sold for about 1.805.000 $ in New York in 2016 ! Google "Bolivars pistols". They have a very interesting story !!

Just a final comment; please don't shoot with such old weapons. The barrel will most probably be ok, BUT the swan-neck holding the flintstone too easily snaps, and the are blade springs inside that also are quite old. Any of this breaks, and the value of the weapons plummets. A collector may be ok with a new stock if well made, but the swan neck have better be original.
Good luck with your work !
Regards Jon, Oslo - Norway