Sporran clasp pistol

[DCampbell16B]

I have to agree with Quarter Scot. Pull the center stud and all four barrels fire. However, rather than fore and aft, I think it was designed for port and starboard. If one had a man holding each arm."Sorry Officers. Let me show you some ID."

In reality I think Mr. Macdonald is more correct. The lock features (as near as I can see in the still photo) a well developed gooseneck cock, a flat plate and roller frizzen spring. All were generally later 18C design features in British locks (but much earlier there than this side of the pond).

[matchlock]

That's a pretty impressive design, IF it were actually functional. But it could have been a lot more compact, and sporran clasp looking.

If worn as a sporran at 12 o'clock, it would fire to your 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock position.

Center ball on top is trigger, when the lock hammer is cocked, that ball is pulled down to look like the rest, it trips the seer on the lock when pulled up. Seer releases cock holding flint to spring into steel frizzen, sparks scraped off frizzen as it flips forward then rain into flash pan full of priming powder. (Weird trigger, but all standard Flintlock to this point.)

If it worked, the touch hole in flash pan would route the fire through black powder filled holes up to the 4 barrels. They would all go off at once, or slight lag on the top barrels for burn rates.

If you look on the barrels above the pan, you'll see a cluster of 4 holes drilled in the sides of the barrels. That's a kinda big spread of touch holes for that size pan, and it's not right at the pan. Hopefully they just pulled some mount screws to move the Lock down for better detail or something? Maybe lock could have been changed at some point?

Pretty cool, it kind of reminds me of the 'duckfoot' multi barrel pistol designs.

Either way, it'd be fun to read its history and check it out while wearing a kilt.