New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

In my experiences ya don't go far wrong from an engineers workshop shitter for alluring calanders :)

And if you have a cunning plan to destroy some gorse and a time in mind then we can work with that...I'm working all through the break then we should quieten down enough for a trip


Cheers
Dan

A little more on the Pinfire guns.

I include a photograph of a selection of pinfire ammunition. I remember many years ago up around Arrowtown picking up the remains of a pinfire shell in 12mm and one can only wonder who fired it and to what end, though I would think most certainly at a target.

These tins and loose rounds range from the tiny little 5mm shells through to 12mm ones. Carefull examination of the photograph should show how they were primed with a percussion cap set into the base and a short length of pin touching the igniting compound at the inner end and protruding out of the top - hence the importance of carrying them in the tin.

As one can readily see it would have been many times more practical to have a pinfire pistol than a percussion one as the shells were compact, self contained and carried in a tin which later could be used for a multiple of other uses whereas a percussion pistol required powder flask, bullet mold and many other accessories which we will look at further on in the article.

I can only envisage that any miner who just happened to have had a small 5mm pinfire pistol could have at least fought off the rats which at one stage plagued Cromwell!

Edited by user Thursday, 15 December 2011 7:10:40 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi Steven -

No I didnt read it but thanks to your thoughtfulness in including the reference I now have - I dont get the ODT because like any paper it is full of propoganda and bad news...interspersed now and again with some grand articles!

It brought back memories of a trip up that exact valley about 1970 with a chap I knew whose father owned a mud brick house up there - we were shooting bunnies in amongst where that gorse now is. His father was a Botanist and my friend went a little further in Education than I did,,,just a little bit mind you - he has two Doctorates - I suppose that makes him Doctor Squared.

My friend never invited me back - I am buggered if I know why -

I am sure it didnt have anything to do with making toffee which I poured into plastic dishes which melted so that the toffee ran down the back of the refrigerator.

I dont think it had anything to do with opening the top of shotgun shells and pouring in wax and then shooting the farmers fence posts with the deadly missiles that result from the wax/pellet mixture.

I cant see how it could have been associated with pouring the pellets out of shotgun shells in the house, drilling holes through the wads into the powder, filling the hollow bases of solid slugs with a blackpowder/wax mixture and making 12g tracers - when I think of it I am surprised there were any tussocks left.

..and for the grant finale I dont think the lack of further invitations had anything to do with shooting a rabbit on the night the rabbit board were having a shoot, sticking a length of number eight wire up its gunga to make it sit up straight in the middle of the road then waiting for the rabbit board to come and kill it all over again...Actually it was also because of me that the old bloke who lived down the road ran off the road and the only thing you could see from 25 yards down the road was the roof of his wagon poking up - I think that was close to where there is a grave marker though not sure about that.

I never considered myself naughty as a young fellow - high spirited maybe...sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Due to the depth of the ground there will still be many times more gold there than was ever taken out - in fact I dont think it has been hardly scratched despite the amount of workings which were once evident.

Edited by user Thursday, 15 December 2011 4:49:22 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I wish I was as good a storyteller as you Graham.You must write a book about all those wild adventures.

Know what you mean about papers,just cancelled getting the local rag, the Oamaru Mail.

I hope to get to the Arrow myself sometime in the near future and see if my detectors find gold

and are waterproof! Did'nt know about the Shag river as a place to look for colour,only heard about

the odd person getting pauas from the beach around the area some years ago.

Hi there Graham, your stories are truly inspiring, and collection of firearms intriguing!!

I wouldn't want anyone to sell their much loved property, (especially to some overseas land grabbing prick) just because it has an issue with some horrible plant life.

To that end I would like to help you clear the gorse and broom, on a one day one day off basis, for the right to scratch around with a detector and to see a part of NZ that most don't get to.

Cheers,

Nathanial

Earlier on in this topic I presented a selection of Chinese Gold fields items.

A close up of the Chinese seals show that they are like the old class teachers stamps which they gave out for good work back in my day except the classroom stamps had rubber bases which had designs or pictures caste in them - the Chinese seals are carved into the wooden block itself.

These are described by a Chinese friend of mine as very 'rare' on the gold fields as they were used by the wealthy families and the wealthy Chinese were not likely to come to the goldfields unless of course as merchants and businessmen.

I always thought that the bottle shown was an opium bottle but my Chinese friend and a noted authority on Chinese Goldfield miners and history has told me that no they are not. They are in fact pill bottles. In the past I have been as pleased as Punch to dig one up complete then within a minute of its exposure to the sun there is a small crack like a miniature gun going off and they crack into two or more bits! Exposure from the damp cold ground to the light and warmth of the sun seems to release stresses in them and they break.

Edited by user Friday, 16 December 2011 10:30:51 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

The last of this batch of Chinese items - once again mentioned in a photo above - these appear to be very scarce and the same set was illustrated in the Gabriels Gully 150th Jubilee display.

I have no idea how the game was played as they are the same at either end so I assume that they were used in a game which was different to the standard domino game. The numbers at either end also go up to twelve.

Edited by user Monday, 19 December 2011 10:57:05 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Earlier on I showed a percussion, 'transition' revolver made in Belgium which according to the chap who handed it to the police over a quarter century ago belonged to his grandfather who carried it at Gabriels Gully.

This pistol is also a transition revolver and once again it can be seen that the only thing holding the barrel on is the cylinder arbor - the barrel being held on by a two screws, visible in the left hand photograph. This type of pistol is known as a 'Bar hammer transition pistol'

Of course the advantage of a gun like this is the fact that if in dire straits and you hit someone on the head with it then the cylinder arbour will invariably bend and it will shoot aorund corners - A decided advantage if being shot at - stand around behind a rock and the gun shoots around the corner of it!

This gun is an English one and was picked up in Otago where it had been owned for many years by an early gun collector prior to the days of the importation of firearms from the United States and Europe to satisfy a budding collector market. It can be assumed therefore that it has a history related to New Zealand with a high probability that it may have been carried on the Gold fields.

These guns were basically the cheapest of the repeating pistols and far cheaper than the high quality Adams and Tranters which were strongly made and reliable but at least the Transition revolvers were a step up from single shot pistols.

It is also unmarked as to maker or retailer but has Birmingham proofs so likely came out to New Zealand in the hands of a British miner who purchased a pistol for protection within the limits of his financial ability.

Edited by user Sunday, 25 December 2011 1:38:04 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

thanks for all the imfo coming forward you old story teller

made my daughter a ring for her 21st out of some gold
made caz and myself our wedding rings
nice necklace for caz
now there is to much gold laying round so just sell it

hi i rember it well last time in africa when i was mining for diamonds i did visit some nigerian bush
didnt find it expensive a little scarey the bush was very thick with a deep revine in the middle
there were lots of creepy things that bit..... other things that flew and buzzed ..... it was a mass of tangled wire weed or something ..... smelt like a swamp....all wet and .........
didnt stay long

i think i will stick with the good old kiwi bush

planning a trip to alaska next year i hope to get in some beaver hunting sorry did i say that i hope to get in some gold mining

have a good christmas