This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Curator Jason Schubert of the J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum in Oklahoma discusses unique artifacts from the Museum's collection in this Museum Minute series. Students at Northeast Technology Center in Claremore, Oklahoma, collaborated with the Museum to explore both the job of curating at a museum and the background stories of museum objects.

Jason Schubert (00:11): These days almost everyone is familiar with the short barrel or sawed off shotgun. It was used for night guard. It's used by good guys and bad guys alike, and whether it's a sawed off shotgun or short barrel shotgun or a coach gun, it did its job. The term "coach gun" comes from when it was being used by the guard on a stagecoach or other kind of wagon. The driver was driving the horses and the guard had his trusty shotgun, here and he was riding shotgun. That's where we get that term from.

Jason Schubert (00:54): But before we had double barrel shotguns like this, we had this little monster. This is, of course, the blunderbuss. The word "blunderbuss" comes from the old Dutch blunderbuss meaning thunder pipe or thunder stick, and this happens to be a flight lock blunderbuss. Most blunderbusses do have a shorter barrel. They have a flared end at the edge. The thought at the time was that this flared out end would help in spread the shot pattern that was coming out. And it also kind of acted as a funnel when you were loading it. So, it had kind of two purposes.

Jason Schubert (01:44): Now, this blunderbuss is smooth bore, it doesn't have rifling in it, so that you could use a solid ball or loose shot, like it was usually used as. The flight lock mechanism, finely ground powder would be put in the flash pan, it'd be covered up with frisson, this hardened steel piece right here. There would be a piece of sharpened flint in the jaws here. When you squeeze the trigger, the jaws fall down, scraping flint onto the steel, kicking the frisson out of the way and the sparks would fall down into that flash pan. That powder goes poof right in your face, and some of the fire would go into the hole there, the touch hole, which would ignite the main charge and fire the gun. That's how the flight lock worked whether it was on a musket, a rifle, or a blunderbuss like this.

Jason Schubert (02:44): I'm Jason Schubert with the JM Davis Arms and Historical Museum, and this is Museum Minute.

Asset ID: 2022.01.04