English Fowler and Hunting Set by Geoffroy Levy

I just finished the project started seven year ago when I came back from one year in Canada. 

Episodically working on it, I created a complete fowl hunting gear making any metal part out of wood but using, as much as possible, traditional skills for carving, sewing, staining and finishing.

This set includes:

-          An English fowler based on a real antique broken stock. It has all the features of a real fowler (Octagon to round pined barrel, ramrod, inlets…) but entirely made of wood.

-          A powder horn with a wood plug and a strap.

-          A leather and canvas hunting pouch with a loading block, a powder measure, a mallet and a pan brush.

-          A leather tool pouch with spare “flints” and a screw driver.

-          A fire striker and a “flint”.

-          A neck knife and its scabbard

-          A “weeping heart” belt axe and a belt holder.

-          A leather shot bag.

Loving the shape of this kind of weapons, I wanted to explore and acquire the skills needed to create a fowl hunting gear (wood, leather, canvas and horn) including a fowling gun.

I wanted to post the result here to share the final step of a technical and historical journey that has been very rewarding for me along the past seven years for both skills and fun.

Copy and photos supplied by Geoffroy Levy.

Work by Geoffroy Levy

I discovered your blog some years ago, and I regularly check it, enjoying reading the new posts. I’m a young (26) French historian of technologies. I’m really interested in pre-industrial skills and crafts. I have been introduced to gunsmithing and 18th/early 19th century craftsmanship through my history studies in Canada. In 2008, I spent a year there studying history of the fur trade and of the Aboriginal People at the University of Manitoba. I specifically studied the impact on Aboriginal People of the introduction of the Northwest Trade Gun into their tribes. Along with my studies, I looked carefully at the skills needed to survive into the wilderness and especially the one needed to make and use traditionnal hunting and trapping gears. I came back to France with some of these skills and the need to experiment by myself new ones.

I started working wood, horn and leather in the old way to create my own pieces. As I didn’t have the tools for working metals and as creating weapons and parts are not as easy as it is in your country I decided to work exclusively by replacing metal by wood. So I started creating wooden replicas of weapons, trying to keep as close as possible to the original models (shape and mechanism for some of them).

I started with a mid XIXth century pocket pistol and then went on with a 1851 Navy Colt. After these few successes, I decided to start working on a complete longhunter (inspired) hunting gear. I started by the hunting pouch, the horn and the accessories. I based my designs on today’s reenacting sources and historical sources.

I now plan to build an wooden English fowler based on an antic long gun stock I bought few years ago. Unfortunately, I don’t have the proper workshop I need to meet the quality I want. I would probably have to postpone this project a little bit.

My latest creation is a personal design of a boxed underhammer handgun and its accessories. I started this project from a discarded pair of brass piano pedals.

I just want to share my experience and my work with other people interested in the same fields. 

Copy and photos supplied by Geoffroy Levy.