Coffee Mills and Dog Whistles
And other crazy things guns needed to be!
This week the Range Arts guys left the blog to me - Dorothy - to collect my favourite weirdest guns in history. They wanted me to approach it as a beginner at shooting (which I am, they’ve taken me a few times now since I got licensed). Which guns do I think are just wild and weird and maybe just a little fascinating? Here we go!
The Duck Foot Pistol
This pistol, quite literally, looks like a duck’s foot. It’s part of a category of guns called volley guns. It has 4 barrels for the purpose of defending against a group. On one pull of the trigger, all 4 barrels shoot. Apparently they were popular in the 18th and 19th centuries with bank guards and pirates — I guess these were people facing groups of bandits. People have made these pistols with up to 25 barrels. Wow! Safe to say this would be prohibited in Canada :) It stands to reason shotguns overtook their popularity, but if they make more Pirates of the Caribbean movies I want some of these pistols in there!
Jörg Weingrill from Potsdam, Germany, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The “Coffee Mill” Sharps
Not to be confused with the Coffee mill gun that was a machine gun with a coffee mill like structure…
This gun has an actual coffee grinder in it! During the American Civil War, soldiers needed two things: a gun, and coffee. A colonel came up the idea of combining them both to make a gun that wasn’t really that good but that doubled as a sub-par coffee grinder. Since the coffee mill was heavy, it just added a bunch of unneeded weight to the rifle, which made it difficult for soldiers to shoot with. So, I like this one because it took two great things and made them both pretty useless! I like dogs and chocolate but putting them together just isn’t a great idea…
We couldn’t get the copyright so, take a look at its pictures here!
The Velo Dog Revolver
Speaking of dogs… This revolver is named not because of its shape, not because of the inventor’s name, but because of its use. In the late 19th century, apparently street dogs were a rowdy bunch. They would attack cyclists on the streets and injure them badly. You guessed it, this revolver was created specifically for shooting feral dogs. The good news is, since people like dogs even when they’re being attacked by them, the revolver was designed to take cartridgers of wax, wood, and chilli powder and simply to scare the dogs away. Today they’re not useful, and thankfully random dog attacks are mostly a thing of the past.
Jebulon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Gyrojet
You might have heard of this one: the gun that was a rocket launcher (but NOT a rocket launcher!). It was developed in the late 60s for firing small rockets called microjets. It had little recoil and was pretty cheap to make. Instead of the usual calibers, they used calibers measuring 6mm to 20 mm. The shots were inaccurate though and pretty slow-loading. They fell out of popularity because of that. That’s too bad, because these sound awesome! I’m sure my co-workers would love to take this to the range and literally blow up some paper targets!
Joe Loong from Reston, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The German Hunting Knife
This gun is the craziest to me. For some reason it combines a knife, a gun, and…. a calendar! So you’re fighting in a war and you’re shooting and hacking and slashing and then… wait… what day is it? What was the point of that being part of your gun? This gun was also heavy and cumbersome, but the idea was that, in case, the gun misfires, you can still use the knife to kill your enemies. I think that’s sort of against the Geneva Convention now… but this was a 16th century weapon. Technology wasn’t as advanced yet. However impractical these guns/knives/calendars were, though, they were rare and prized possessions.
So, what do I make of this little blog project? It seems clear that throughout history, from fending off groups of bank robbers, to defending against feral dog attacks, to needing instant use of your calendar during battle… guns have been a product of their specific time and a window into the culture of the past.
Hope you enjoyed this one, as much as I did!
-Dorothy (From Range Arts)
