I have to bring this up when dose an antique gun become no longer an antique

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tula

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for instance say an antique muzzleloader....lets say you replace the stock, when do you draw the line? my personal oppinion is if you were to replace the barral with a new one on a muzzleloader that being the main componant without which it wouldnt work period,.... where dose the law draw the line really though? is there anywheres in the law that they state where the line ends?
 
tula said:
for instance say an antique muzzleloader....lets say you replace the stock, when do you draw the line? my personal oppinion is if you were to replace the barral with a new one on a muzzleloader that being the main componant without which it wouldnt work period,.... where dose the law draw the line really though? is there anywheres in the law that they state where the line ends?
Click to expand...

This is far from the first time this has been asked. I believe the answer to be the breech plug.
 
They waffle on this when it's discussing muzzle loading single shots. Usually they define the gun as its breech plug... but there was a debate a while back on here and the consensus was, when the gun is visibly or physically more new than old.

Yay for firearms law.
 
most of a pre 1898 muzzle loader is spare parts. In the words of the RCMP, the breach plug and perhaps the barrel are the frame or receiver. If you sleeved an original barrel to give the gun a shootable bore, the breach plug and outer barrel would remain the same and the gun would retain its antiquity

cheers mooncoon
 
But if you were to fit a new breechplug, the gun would no longer be an antique? An Enfield rifled musket with a new breechplug would be subject to registration?

I would suggest that a breeched barrel would be the "firearm".

The law does not specify. The brightlights who drafted the legislation did not consider lock, stock and barrel type firearms.

I am unaware of any published definition or case law precedent. Ask, and you might get an opinion. Ask again, and you will get a different one.
 
"The law does not specify. The brightlights who drafted the legislation did not consider lock, stock and barrel type firearms."

Welcome to the Canadian grey area!
 
a antique muzzleload will stay antique if the barrel and breech plug are antique

i can replace a breech plug on a 1853 enfield with a pre 1898 breech plug and it will stay antique

for new made stuff if its flintlock and met to be shot with one hand on the fore grip and one to pull the trigger your in the antique(i say this because blanket guns are antique) id say as long as the OAL is 26" and its flint you antique

you can sleave antique barrels all day as long as you dont put new breech plugs on them

the barrel and breech of a pistol or prucssion gun has to be made and fitted together before 1898 it does not even need to ever been fitted to a stock and lock
 
[/QUOTE]are you serious?? So two antique parts that have laid separately on a bench for 300 years once fitted together create a prohib???

Do people just make this crap up?[/QUOTE]

the barrel and breech make the receiver so having them fitted together makes them antique i dot doubt that a pre 1898 barrel and breech plug can be fited together ow and be antique but its a dark grey area :p
 
The pre 1898 definition has been redefined by the RCMP. That doesn't mean that the law meant it to be that way. Look at the US where even post 1898 guns are considered antique as long as the patent date is pre 1898 (1899 in the US).

Of course you are allowed to install newly made parts in an old gun, just for safety reasons anyway. Altering the gun is a whole other story.
 
Our gun laws have me baffled. If the law is so grey and undefined as to be undecipherable by a citizen of average intelligence-( You can not know if you are breaking the law )- then that law should ( In my humble opinion ) not be valid.
j,
 
tiriaq said:
But if you were to fit a new breechplug, the gun would no longer be an antique? An Enfield rifled musket with a new breechplug would be subject to registration?

I would suggest that a breeched barrel would be the "firearm".

The law does not specify. The brightlights who drafted the legislation did not consider lock, stock and barrel type firearms.
Click to expand...

I wrote to the RCMP commissioner a year or so after the passing of bill C68, asking what part of a muzzle loader was the frame or receiver and suggesting that it was the breach plug. I received a reply from the person who was in charge of developing the FRT system, that it was the breach plug and possibly the barrel. Obviously opinion only but I did get it in writing. Just baffled now where I have filed it. His first name was Mike but have forgotten his last name and he has undoubtedly retired by now.

The trade off is that most RCMP cannot distinguish a modern muzzle loader from an antique much less distinguish a modern breach plug in an antique barrel. In a separate letter I asked the commissioner how they distinguished valid antique muzzle loaders with no maker's name on them. The answer was by the design or construction although in a follow up letter they made a comment something along the lines of "in those few examples" and I can't remember any further of the answer. My follow up question was to the effect that there were many people making muzzle loaders today that were indistinguishable from antiques in design and construction.

While I think the FRT system has its merits, one of its major flaws is that they often identify guns on the basis of a factory model and use features that are not on the frame or receiver. The Winchester model 70 for example is or was identified by the writing on the barrel. I don't believe there is a good method in the FRT system for separating out the various Mauser types made by different manufacturers, if reworking or rust has obliterated the writing on the reciever.

cheers mooncoon
 
what mooncoon says is good anough for me! I collect muzzleloading guns and got in an argument about restocking an 18th century flint holster pistol I have that has a busted stock, I told the fellow that its perfectly fine as from my understanding its the breechplug and barral....so now down to buisness and on to the new stock. thanks guys I'll pass this tidbit of info on to him.
 
I called the CFC with the same questions as mooncoon asked, probably in the same time period after C-68 became law. It was pretty obvious that this was not something that had been considered. No way to get a useful, straight answer.
My opinion is obviously of little value if push comes to shove, but I would say that a restocked antique pistol is still an antique. A relocked antique pistol is still an antique. A gun with an antique lock, and a modern barrel assembly? I wouldn't think so.
 
that I agree with, new barral not a chance....I see it done from time to time but I disagree with it when push come's to shove I'll bet youed lose on that one.
 
I'll try to get this thing done this winter and put some pics up...I thought about selling it but why....its a bunch of perfectly good parts the locks mint and the barrals in nice shape along with all the hardware I'll copy the old stock and just move everything over to it.
 
About the same time I thought that there should be metalurgical differences between iron of say the 1880s and immediately post 1900. There are some sort of; I gather modern iron/steel contains very little I think it was nitrogen because the bessemer process of the 1800s used atmospheric air to remove carbon while in modern times I think that oxygen only is used. Around the time of WWII small amounts of boron were added in some cases because it amplified the effect of other elements in iron/steel and allowed the producer to use less say managanese for example. I am not convinced that boron is still added for the purpose.

I think if you had one breach plug of unknown age you could reasonably argue that its age could not be determined as pre or post 1898. On the other hand if you made a batch of guns using a batch of breach plugs from the same source at the same time, their composition would probably be all the same and it would be hard to argue that such uniformity was purely be chance.

cheers mooncoon
 
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