Black Powder, a New Gun, some Bags, and some Old Horns Part 3

Powder horns say a lot about the person using them.  That's why I've gone through great lengths to make one that suited my persona.  However, when you're first starting out, you take what you can get.  And sometimes, you luck out and get some good stuff!

Let me show you my journey through powder horns and tell you a bit about them.  We'll save the lengthy explanations for another time.  But for the first horn I ever received, was not one I had made- it was one of those cheap horns that do the job.

This one had been given to me by a fellow I worked with who said he had bought it a long time ago in a mom and pop hunting store in some far flung place in the Midwest.  It had a flat stopper on it, a little mass produced knob on the front with just some thin leather making a strap for it all.  It was nearly transparent, blonde, and had some places where beetles chewed on it.  It was not suited for reenactment, so I had to alter it quite a bit.

I'm very ambitious when it comes to projects, and I had been researching powder horns, and I thought, "Hey, having a screw tip would make life easier for me and the powder."  So after scraping it down some I found some old tap and dies and went to work.  Horn takes threads surprisingly well, but the antler tip I made was giving me some trouble.  I managed to wrangle it through sheer force and willpower, and it fit like a charm.  I made a new plug too out of maple, and fastened it with brass tacks that I filed flush.  I made a copper staple for the plug, and then I took an old belt and cut a strap for it.  The stopper you see here is the 3rd one I made because they kept breaking off in the antler tip.   It pours really well, and the removable tip does make filling it up a little easier.  It holds about 3/4ths a pound of powder too, so it's not a lazy man's horn.  It's ugly though, but I used it until very recently with absolutely no problems.

The next horn a good friend of mine gave me, because her husband found out I was doing muzzleloading.  This horn was his fathers, and with my friend and her husband both in their early sixties, I can only guess at the age of this horn.  It does show some signs of aging like some yellowing and beetle marks, but it's soundly made and very elegant.

The horn itself is fairly small, I consider it a day horn, it probably only holds about 1/4th a pound of powder.  It does pour well, and the stopper is very small yet tough.  It had a thin dry rotted leather strap (some of which you can still see on the end there) so I made a hemp cord to use as a new strap.  The plug is cherry I think, and the knob is brass or copper.  The tacks are brass and there appears to be no glue on it at all.  I would say it's anywhere from 60 to 100 years old, maybe a bit older.  I used it for a while at reenactments and it worked great at sieges and the like.  It's a great little horn and I'm lucky to have it.

As I was walking around the blanket traders at Fort Harrod my second year of reenacting I found a neat horn this fellow wanted to get rid of for cheap.  I wanted a bigger, nicer horn so I grabbed it up and gave it go.  This is what happened with it-

This horn was surprisingly thick, but after much scraping and carving I relieved it of a decent amount of weight.  I had a real good time carving this one, I made it in the summer in a flurry of about two days of constant work.  I went all out on the maple stopper with the scrolling, and the button on the front is carved horn that I had to cut off to make the pouring end.  The plug is antique pine that I carved, and the pegs are more of the same wood.  I never got around to making this a permanent strap, as I've only used it for the range a few times.  It pours fine, but it holds about 1/2 a pound of powder, so it's at a weird inbetween size for me.  I had hoped my wife would use it, but she doesn't have any interest in shooting black powder rifles with me right now.  I'll save it for her though, and it'll be eye candy for me!

The last horn is what I've wanted since I started reenacting- A buffalo powder horn!  I like American Bison, I like that they were in Kentucky in the 1700's, and I love the taste of buffalo meat, so it'd be a natural that I should incorporate that into my persona.  This horn will get its own post in the future, but here it is-

This horn I made specifically for trekking and hunting, as it holds well over a pound of powder.  It's fairly sizable coming in at 14 inches on the curve and 4 inches diameter at the base.  I modeled it after the Fort Pitt Bison Horn but made it less decorative.  The stopper is and plug are both maple, and the pegs are oak.  The strap is cut from a belt with my own deer hide brain tan thongs.  It pours very well and carries really well.  Hopefully it will last many many years to come, and it will be fielded heavily in the future.  

I've made more powder horns than this, but these are the ones I've used personally.  I hand carve everything for all the horns I make, so each one represents an immense amount of work.  I look forward to talking about some of them more in depth and sharing the how and why of their designs.  But for now, I'm sticking with a good sized horn for multiple uses.  Let me know what you think, and I'll let you know what I think next time!