Real Hand Cannons, Flintlocks, & Weird Gun Words | No Lowballers Podcast Episode 6

In this week’s No Lowballers podcast by GoWild presented by GunBroker.com, we’re talking all about handgun history and even let a few weird gun words fly!

Logan and Allen jump right in with a history of hand cannons! Early hand cannons emerged in the 14th century with a flower vase design that necked down smaller. Originally designed for use with arrows, which did not work well, they evolved to anything that hurt being loaded such as: gravel, chain, or nails.

Logan goes through the timeline of early handguns. Starting with hand cannons that were extremely uncontrollable and inefficient. Much of early handgun development was trial and error to see what worked or didn’t work. The next evolution was matchlock which is a very simple design but with a constant lit match it was an extremely limited design. Some of the matchlock downfalls included being extinguished by rain, potentially catching your own coat on fire, or even worse – showing the enemies exactly where you are!

Jacob asks an important question about effective range of early handguns. Allen and Logan bring up the multitude of scenarios that play into that question. Are you shooting nails or chain? Everything out of a hand cannon would have different effective distances but overall the consensus is if within conversational distance it would be much like the modern handgun.

We speak on the purpose of early handguns. On the battlefield hand cannons were more to spook cavalry vs actual effectiveness directly on a foe. When speaking of the wheellock, generally it was more of a boutique “barbeque” gun. Owned mostly by very wealthy individuals who had these custom built more as a conversational piece.

Next, we’re talking about the flintlock! Allen speaks of some of the flintlocks you can find on GunBroker.com along with their price ranges. Allen tells us all about the different options for early handguns. Flintlocks, wheellocks, matchlocks, and even hand cannons are available at a wide price range depending where you’d like to start your collection. He speaks on the Germanic wheellock, which was the sweet spot of them being produced.

We close the episode with all sorts of weird gun words. Touch-holes?? Nipples?? What are some of your favorite weird gun words?

If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a rating and review!! The No Lowballers podcast is a brand new joint venture between GoWild and GunBroker.com to explore the history and heritage of firearms. We hope to expose you to the vintage guns of the golden age along with newer, modern guns, specialty items, and a few other odd balls along the way. Jump in and come along for the ride!

The show launches every Thursday morning. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Catch up on previous episodes of the No Lowballers Podcast here.

Hear the truth behind the trigger on this show that highlights the insanity, calamity and oddity of firearm history, collectibles and the crazy valuables. Every week historian Logan Metesh of High Caliber History joins the teams at GunBroker.com and GoWild to discuss topics such as mobster favorites, collector pieces, war-time weapons, hunting gun history, competition firearms and more.