I'm not an expert on that part of history, but just reasonably speaking it seems like if there's anywhere you'd store your blackpowder, it would NOT be near a source of spark or major heat. Like, say, the fireplace. (There's always the chance the image was staged, after all. People have been doing that all the way back to paintings on cave walls.)
Most of the time I've been in older houses done to match the time of, there's a place to store the guns where they're most handy -- right by the front door, usually right behind it. Meaning, if someone comes, you're going to head out the front door and that puts the gun right at hand. (Leaning in the corner behind the most-used door is where my grandfather and all my uncles kept their guns. They didn't even have gun cases!)
The thing with storing a gun over a fireplace is because of the way fireplaces tend to send up heat to what's above them. It's heat, baking the wood, and the whole expansion/contraction thing as it heats then cools off. This is a major problem for guns, which rely on air-tightness (you don't want it blowing up in your face, you want the force going out the end of the barrel). But that's also probably more of a problem in cases where the gun never moves from that spot. I imagine it's less of an issue if the gun is just stored there at night, and taken down again in the morning. In lots of places, especially where things weren't settled yet, it was common to take the gun almost anywhere you went. You might have to deal with unhappy natives, rustlers, thieves, or just see a deer and hey, look, dinner.
In which case expansion/contraction might not be such an issue since the fire's on nearly year-round (especially if it's used for cooking), so there's no significant cooling-off per se. And the heat baking the gun might be less of an issue because that's a long-term thing -- if you're using the gun daily, you're putting a lot more wear on it than it'd ever get sitting on the wall. (Plus, if you're using the gun daily, you're probably also doing upkeep on it, which guns-over-fireplaces pretty much never, ever get, unless the family decides to sell them and then it's off to a gunsmith who cries in the backroom over the absolute negligence of a piece of american history.)
But if you wanted definite specific answers, I bet I know some folks who could give you more authoritative responses. Mine are just general ideas, gathered from those authoritative folks and things I've been told (and seen) in various historical/reenactment interests.
Re: mostly off the subject
Date: 17 Dec 2012 04:41 am (UTC)Most of the time I've been in older houses done to match the time of, there's a place to store the guns where they're most handy -- right by the front door, usually right behind it. Meaning, if someone comes, you're going to head out the front door and that puts the gun right at hand. (Leaning in the corner behind the most-used door is where my grandfather and all my uncles kept their guns. They didn't even have gun cases!)
The thing with storing a gun over a fireplace is because of the way fireplaces tend to send up heat to what's above them. It's heat, baking the wood, and the whole expansion/contraction thing as it heats then cools off. This is a major problem for guns, which rely on air-tightness (you don't want it blowing up in your face, you want the force going out the end of the barrel). But that's also probably more of a problem in cases where the gun never moves from that spot. I imagine it's less of an issue if the gun is just stored there at night, and taken down again in the morning. In lots of places, especially where things weren't settled yet, it was common to take the gun almost anywhere you went. You might have to deal with unhappy natives, rustlers, thieves, or just see a deer and hey, look, dinner.
In which case expansion/contraction might not be such an issue since the fire's on nearly year-round (especially if it's used for cooking), so there's no significant cooling-off per se. And the heat baking the gun might be less of an issue because that's a long-term thing -- if you're using the gun daily, you're putting a lot more wear on it than it'd ever get sitting on the wall. (Plus, if you're using the gun daily, you're probably also doing upkeep on it, which guns-over-fireplaces pretty much never, ever get, unless the family decides to sell them and then it's off to a gunsmith who cries in the backroom over the absolute negligence of a piece of american history.)
But if you wanted definite specific answers, I bet I know some folks who could give you more authoritative responses. Mine are just general ideas, gathered from those authoritative folks and things I've been told (and seen) in various historical/reenactment interests.