Trigger guard but to what?

[alderan33]

Think this may be a trigger guard from a musket but not sure. It is. Token and bent. Thanks for looking.

 

[ABruce]

I've never seen a musket or any gun with a trigger guard just like that. The trigger would have to protrude through that gap and theres is really no room for travel. I don't know what that coin is so I don't know the size, but I really don't think its a trigger guard at all.

 

[kuger]

Yes,def. a trigger guard......it is bent like he said............

 

[taz42o]

Looks like a bent trigger guard to me. Here is a site with black powder gun parts you may find a match go down to trigger guards section.

Gun Parts: for flint, percussion, & early cartridge guns - Track of the Wolf

 

[taz42o]

Ha, token and bent . sounds like some people I know.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Alderan33 wrote:
> Think this may be a trigger guard from a musket but not sure. It is [br]oken and bent.

It is definitely a broken and bent trigger guard from the Model-P1853 Enfield Rifle, made in Britain. Your brass Enfield trigger-guard was most probably on one of the over 100,000 Enfield rifles imported from England by the Confederacy through the yankee navy blockade durung the American civil war. However, the yankees also imported thousands of Enfield rifles in the early years of the war ...but far fewer than the Confederates did. So I can only say "the statistical odds favor" yours being from a Confederate-used Enfield rifle.

Here's a photo of a non-excavated undamaged Model-1853 Enfield Rifle's trigger-guard, to show you what yours looked like before it was damaged. Also, two photos showing one which is broken like yours but not bent. Unfortunately, completely-undamaged excavated ones are scarce. That fact is mainly due to the yankees' policy of destroying captured Confederate rifles by smashing them to pieces against a treetrunk or large rock. Also, sometimes soldiers of both sides would destroy their own weapons when they knew they were about to be captured.

I should mention that yours, like the ones in the photos, is missing the iron sling-swivel for attaching the lower end of the rifle's sling-strap to the trigger guard. The sling-swivel fit into the hole at the front of the guard's finger-loop. The tall narrow stud with a small hole in it was for "pinning" the front end of the trigger guard into the rifle's wooden stock. The other end of the guard (which is broken off of your specimen) was attached to the stock with an iron screw.

 

[alderan33]

Yep that's it. Thanks cannon ball guy. You are like the superman of the relic world.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Thanks (sincerely) for that compliment. But, being a humble-minded guy, I must mention that the "Superman of relics" image is an illusion. If I look super here, it's because I almost never reply to a What-Is-It question that I don't know the answer to. (Or, know where to FIND the answer.) Look at how many W-I-I posts I cannot answer. ;-)