I have seen the following gun listed on the Sykes Sutlery site and it looks like a good "beginers piece" at a reasonable price....

>>Handgonne005 - A shoulder fired handgonne of the Wars of the Roses/Burgundian Wars period. The barrel is available in .50 caliber with a simple shoulder stock, priming pan and cover, but NO lock. Ignition is by direct application of the slow match. The piece is copied from plate D in the Osprey The Swiss at War 1300-1500 minus the hole drilled in the stock for the thong. Construction is by John Buck. Handgonne005 - 15th Century Handgonne $195.00 - with external serpentine $210.00.<<

I've seen one of John Bucks 15th c. handgonnes. John is a talented gun assembler/smith, but the 15th c. piece is weak. It is OK for a re-enactment where authenticity isn't the top priority, but it would be like showing up to an ACW event with a two band enfield or Zouave.

As a gun, it funtions as it should. As a 15th c. gun it has a decent stock with a sewer pipe tacked onto it. Most Gonnes did not have a perfectly straight tube for a barrel, the barrel would taper and swell out a mite at the end. Nice guns made by decent gunsmiths had a lot more work into them, and would often go from hexagonal to round, then maybe back to hexagonal, and would have rings along the barrel (the correct terminology escapes me).

By the 1450's locks started to become common, although hand held match ignition was to persist into the first quarter of the 16th c. in some cases (check out some of those Holbien sketches of actions during the Italian wars) These may be older guns still servicable & in use though. Trigger choices could be a simple hook on the end of the serpentine like on the Buck piece, to a button trigger, to a more elaborate & traditional looking crossbow type sear.

I am a blackpowder arms enthusiast, and I have literally been shooting the stuff intermitantley since I first set a linstock to a touch hole of an 18th c. galloper gun at a live fire blackpowder cannon shoot when I was 8. Perhaps I am picky, but the only people I am aware of making good representations of 15th c. guns are Albion Arms and Historic Enterprises. These are the only two sources we will use for Wolfe Argent.

My advice - Save your dough, shoot a gun from the Red Company stores until you can afford your own. Then you can have a gun to be proud of (and maybe even take a deer with during black powder season) instead of making due with something that you probably won't be happy with a week after you get it in your hot little hands. If I took my own advice at the beginning, I would have saved myself thousands of dollars in gear I have had to replace.

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Bob R.