Pedersoli Indian Trade Musket

About the Pedersoli Indian Trade Musket

The Pedersoli Indian Trade Musket is a 20-gauge smoothbore flintlock muzzleloader built by Italian black-powder specialist Davide Pedersoli. A faithful reproduction of the trade guns supplied by fur-trading companies to North American frontiersmen and Native peoples between roughly 1760 and 1830, it pairs a 36-inch blued octagonal smoothbore barrel with a traditional flintlock lock, brass furniture, a brass blade front sight, satin-finished American walnut stock and a wooden ramrod. Being smoothbore it can fire a patched round ball or a charge of shot.

Trade guns like this were among the most important commodities of the North American fur trade: lightweight, inexpensive smoothbore flintlocks that trading companies bartered to Native nations and frontier hunters, often recognizable by their oversized brass serpent-shaped sideplate.

Pedersoli Indian Trade Musket specifications

Factory model code S.282 (also cataloged as FR3170). Barrel length is listed as 36 to 36-1/4 inches depending on source; overall length about 52 inches; weight about 7.25 lb (3.3 kg). Designed to use 5/8-inch (0.625 in) gun flints.