Stuff in Steve's Office #4

[sleigh]

These two items are on the wall of my office. On the top is an old, wooden beer keg tap that resided in my Grandpa Leigh’s garage, which he allowed me to take away at one point.  I don’t know how old the tap might be, but it’s likely from the 1920s or even earlier.  Grandpa Leigh ran liquor up from Kentucky into Ohio during Prohibition, so it’s not surprising that he had stuff like this around.  I also have an ancient ceramic jug from his garage that once held whiskey.

On the bottom is a double-barreled percussion cap pistol with two triggers (one for each barrel).  Again, I don’t know how old this was; I believe it came from my mother’s side of the family and belonged to the Kohnle side of the family, which means the pistol may have come from Germany originally.  I know that I have some coins found in my my Grandmother Kohnle’s attic which are German and date from the early 1700s.  I have a round tin box that still has one percussion cap in it.  The way the pistol works is that you have the powder and a ball tamped into the barrel; you draw back to the hammer mechanism and put a percussion cap over the metal nipple that it exposes.  When you pull the trigger, the hammer slams into the percussion cap, which send a spark down through the metal nipple (which has a hole in it).  That ignites the powder and *blam* the gun fires.  With two barrels, you obviously have two shots before you have to reload.  I know the percussion caps work -- at one time, that tin had several caps in it, but as a teenager, I used all but one playing with the gun.  I’ve never fired it with a powder charge, however.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Good to know that the top one is only single barrel.