I found this little pistol on my Sunday evening hunt.My Ace350 found it in about a foot of muddy sand.The barrel kinda just crumbled apart while cleaning it.Pretty cool anyway.Any idea of age?Thanks Mark
When I first looked at it I thought it was a Stevens Gem .22 pocket pistol, but the grip is the wrong shape. (1st pic) The second pic is a "Pointer" .22 and much closer to your gun. An exact id might be difficult without markings on it. Basically it is the "Saturday Night Special" of it's day, which would be 1870's roughly to early 1900's. There were a lot of gun makers back then cranking out nearly identical guns to yours.
It's a really cool little gun, and all the corroded iron parts are out there, you could in theory restore it to a working pistol off of your brass frame. It's something I'd be tempted to try if it were my find......
Mark, It's not the Ethan Allen gun shown in the earlier post. It is definitely a different version. If you are interested I can try to help you find parts, but it'll be hard without it in my hands obviously. Your best bet would be to go to your next local gun show and find someone who specializes in antique pistols like that. There will be a guy, there always is..... The way it woud have worked is there would be a button on the bottom of the frame under the barrel, when you push the button, the barrel would pivot to load or unload it, they you had to pull back the hammer. it's single action only. A friend of mine had a similar one years ago, and they are neat little guns to play with as far as plinking cans goes. It's the kind of project I love. I just took on a new project gun, a bit newer, made in 1901, (todays find post) and I love fixing them up when possible.....