Philadelphia Derringer

Looks like the escutcheons could use some inletting. I used to have one just like that. It was my first muzzle loader kit build 40 years ago.

That was my first muzzleloader/kit as well. Back in the roaring ‘70s.

I also had one back in the 70s. As I remember the lock didn't have a bridle and now that I know more it's something I'd demand in a lock. I still after all these years think it's a cool looking gun. If I saw another at a good price I'd buy it.
If it were me I'd draw file the numbers off the barrel and brown it. The stock I'd strip and find a stain or dye that would give me the color I'd be happy with then some Watco Danish Oil for finish.

the first few pictures look very yellow. it it were me, eventually I'd strip that poly off, any remover will work - and then just clean up the wood a touch and add some darker stain of choice to it, and poly it back up. I like the lower gloss poly, the super shiny looks like plastic to me, and people put too much of it on IMHO. a low gloss, and just enough to seal the wood up good.

the latter pictures look much better to me. you could also just take the stock off and leave it in the sun for a while, to see how much it darkens up. I'd dull that a bit with 0000 steel wood, just to make it a little less plastic look and feel.

RGB, red green blue, cyan magenta yellow, yellow and blue I believe are complimentary colors, so - if you want it a bit more brown and darker, there are probably some coatings you can just buff up the exiting poly and add a touch of poly with some tint in it - and it will probably do what you are looking for with the least effort. something with a bit more blue in it will tamp down the yellow hue some.

Might be Birchwood Casey brass black.
I found part of a butchered kit gun disassembled in my father in laws stuff after he died that I had fun with. Almost tossed it.
Lots of plugs and inlays to fix screwed up areas and fluted the barrel to get rid of the half filed off roll stamp.
I did shorten the barrel pin after these photos.

After buying the Lyman GPP in .54 this year I'd definitely like to have another smaller true muzzleloader that's not a revolver. If I could find a snake eyes derringer I'd jump on it, two shots of .36 caliber balls is nothing to sneeze at and those are smaller and more practical than the Philadelphia, but more potent than .31 Colt Pocket revolvers.

Nice job on the browning, now file in some dovetails for some sights.

I wish that "Philadephia" derringer was .50 instead of .44 ! I paired one with my .50 "Hawken" over the fireplace. I like to keep things as I would have had them during "back in the day"

I have a "liege" Pedersoli screw Barrel .44 derringer with my .44 revolvers, same bullet and that little Jewel hits hard for what it is !

I paired a Lyman Plains Pistol in .50 with my .50 Lyman Deer Stalker carbine I actually go black powder hunting with. The pistol is a great finisher , if needed and legal !
"back in the day" , before revolvers I would have that Plains pistol (or two) and rifle in .50 and a SxS 10 guage "coach gun" like my Pedersoli if I was traveling around on the Land ! All I would need would be .50 balls and some #6 bird shot patch material caps and Holy Black !

Later during revolver days an 1860 Army (or two like I have) .44 and the same .50 rifle and 10 gauge SxS would really be nice traveling

If settled on a farm a .36 revolver , a derringer , and rifle in .36 and the same SxS would be adequate until the Cartridge era.

I have a couple of newish Ruger stocks that I think are Beech. I was going to mess with the finish, just cause I thought a bit darker was better, and what do I know about Beech wood, not much, so - I stared at it for a while and decided I liked it. Wonder if you can find out what basic type of stain they use, and then just use that as a baseline. I think all I ended up doing to them was dull them up a bit with some 0000 steel wool, and then just seal all the wood in good with wax, and called it good, they are shooters so - I figure I'll ding them up over the years, so - can't be too picky if you're gonna shoot it.

As others have written, my first kit was also a Philadelphia derringer. I just put it together as it was and it fit pretty good. At the time I didn't have the knowledge nor the tools to do a good job. Mine came with a post front sight that had to be tapped into the barrel but I had no Idea of how to do that at the time.
I still have it and it fires as it should but it isn't very pretty. As I recall, I got it at a pawn shop for less than $20.

Use black powder residue to antique the brass. The action plate - if you don't like the way it looks you can lightly sand it to remove any colors and then dab with your finger with some browning and some bluing solutions on it. Maybe handle it a bit first to leave some oils from your skin. Also dilute some of the bluing and have some non diluted for different shades so you get something that looks like case coloring. Have a rag or paper towel handy to stop any coloring. The above I learned from a friend who was a gunsmith and would make older guns still look old after he worked on them.
I use to make Damascus knives and hand forged high carbon steel knives for cowboys and muzzleloaders. The steel knives I would dab on mustard. Leave em sit all day then rub off the mustard under running water with a rag. If it wasn't what I wanted, just do it again until it did look old the way I wanted. At a gunshow where I was selling my knives, a guy was looking at them for about ten minutes. Normally I don't say anything, but this time I ask him if I could answer any questions. He ask me where I found so many nice old knives. I said I had made all of them in the last year or so. He said no, he could see they were old. I said thank you, they're suppose to look old. That mustard must have put a protective film on the steel. Well, at least they didn't rust quite so easily. And if they did, just take some 4 O steel wool and bingo, it would look good again with a little more color. Just a couple of ideas that may be helpful.

I have one of the very same I got from a local shop for about $80, maybe 3 or 4 years ago. It was assembled and fit very poorly and I’ve been slowly working on it but it’s definitely not ready to show yet. I shoot mine with a .45ACP case worth of 3F goex, or with some of the old can of Pyrodex RS I have just to use the stuff up.

Lead .437 balls work well with a patch, but I have also fired a few 262gr LRN bullets I have for loading Webley food and those seemed to work pretty well due to the hollow base. Quite a bit of thump. I did also fire a few .437 steel pachinko balls I bought off amazon just to see how they work, and the gun didn’t seem to mind them. Just need to think of a good use case for them...

You were talking about making it look more original. Look at the hammer/nipple/breech area. On originals then the hammer is down on the nipple the fence on the breech plug is between the shooters face and percussion cap. Or to put it another way, the fence sticks up into the area where the hammer bends around. On modern reproductions the top of the nipple is above the fence. Now , the fence isn't doing it's job of protecting the shooter from pieces of the cap blowing off when shot.
Actually what I'm talking about is much more pronounced with a Hawkin than the Lincoln gun.

Pedersoli is the only company today making a decent copy of a Philadephia style Deringer but they aren't cheap and are still just a bit larger than the one that Booth used. This listing says .45 cal but the one used by Booth was .44 cal.

Dixie gun works sells it in both a kit and finished form with the kit being less, but then one would have to hand checker the stock and have the side plates engraved.

Finished gun
https://www.dixiegunworks.com/index...21/product_name/PH0913+PHILADELPHIA+DERRINGER

Kit form
https://www.dixiegunworks.com/index...roduct_name/PK0863+PHILADELPHIA+DERRINGER+KIT



There is a bit of confusion about the spelling of Derringer. Henry Deringer spelled his name with only one "r". However, because his pistols were so popular they were copied by many other gunsmiths who simply borrowed his name to help sell their knock-offs.

Even though he had no patent on his pistols and there were no trademark laws at the time, many of the imitators tried to avoid any litigation by simply spelling his name with two "r"s. Oddly, that copied form became the generic spelling for all small pocket pistols. Most spell-check software will try to correct the spelling to two r's.

I have a set of two matched commemorative cased Deringers that were sold by the US Historical Society back in the early 1980s. They were made for the USHS by Uberti but one has to remove the barrel to see the proofs and date codes. The only non-historical marks that can be seen are the matching serial numbers with an A & B suffix out of the limited run of sets. They are supposed to be fairly accurate copies of the Lincoln/Booth Deringer and the barrels are only 2.5 inches long not including the tang.

Here's a link to my old thread where I posted several pictures of the set along with a dueling set I got at the same time.

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...-self-beware-long-story.829766/#post-10704812

Scroll down past the pictures of the dueling set for shots of the Deringers. I've never attempted to shoot them as they just seem too delicate.




Cheers

Yeah, just about anything Pedersoli makes these days is pricy. They are maybe the last Italian company left making fine flintlock pistols and long guns. They do import American black walnut and curly maple for their American replicas so I guess that's part of the cost.

I have yet to shoot one of the duelers. I bought the correct size balls from Track of the Wolf and got some new flints but I haven't been to the range since before the pandemic started.

The cased pairs of the reproduction Jefferson screw barrel flint box lock pistols show up from time to time at auction and on Gunbroker. I've seen them go as low as $1200 and as high as $2k.

I don't own the set but here are some pictures of one that sold at Rock Island last year. These were never offered singly to the best of my knowledge--just in way overpriced commemoratives set that never retained their original value in that they sell for less now than they did 35 to 45 years ago.
https://www.rockislandauction.com/d...s-historical-society-thomas-jefferson-pistols


Still, most of the initial issues that the US Historical Society initially produced were one-of-a-kind unique historical issues and never mass-produced so their prices today sometimes represent a decent value. Unfortunately, toward the end, the USHS started making generic commemoratives by simply taking standard production items like a Uberti 3rd model percussion Dragoon and pimping it up with gaudy gold plating. The company got bought out by "America Remembers" which sort of specializes in gaudy stuff like a .45 automatic dedicated to the late country singer Conway Twitty. You can already see the gold plate wearing off on the front end of the slide and that's an actual promo picture.




Cheers