For the uninitiated, the term boxlock describes the mechanism in shoulder arms used to lock their barrels into place or to describe their firing mechanisms.

A pinfire cartridge is an encased one with a unique ignition system patented by a Frenchman in 1833. Muzzle brakes are installed or designed into the muzzle end of a barrel to reduce recoil.

Mumbletypeg is a game devised by kids more than 300 years ago whereby pocket knives are flipped into the air with the goal of their blade or blades sticking into the ground.

If your knife ends up sticking into you or any bystanders, you lose that episode, whether or not any blood appears. Its blade must stick into the ground.

Mumbletypeg was alive and well in my youth, but I never see boys kneeling in the dirt and flipping pocket knives these days. For one thing there isn’t as much dirt around as there was back then. Concrete has taken its place, the better for rollerblading and popping wheelies.

Man’s fascination with guns and knives began when the first ones were made. Attempts to make better ones, bigger ones, smaller ones, cheaper ones etc. never ends, and has resulted in approximately as many different varieties as there are grains of sand on the seashore.

The public can browse, trade, buy or just talk guns and knives with collectors, vendors and others at gatherings called “gun and knife shows.” These days there isn’t likely to be very many discussions about mumbletypeg except by someone long in the tooth who likely would be seen as having advanced dementia.

There is a strong artistic element in gun making and knife making. This aspect is what attracts most people to these important tools of our history.

I have a knife which was made for me and given to me by a dear friend who has since died too early in life. He formed the blade from an old buggy spring found on the prairie near his home in North Dakota.

That fact alone reveals that there has to be a story there. The handle is made from the antler of a mule deer buck he took there near the Badlands. It is held in place with brass rivets.

My friend’s wife cut and sewed the leather sheath which has the image of a running deer engraved on it. The blade is polished to a mirror finish.

I like to speculate about that piece of steel. Perhaps it is a remnant from an escape run by a wounded and dying soldier, fleeing the Battle of Little Bighorn(Custer’s Regiment of the U.S. Cavalry were soundly defeated there). Because the metal is from a buggy spring, the soldier would be of high rank, such as a colonel.

Its secret will remain within its tempered molecules, but there is a story there; that is for sure. For there is a story behind almost every relic of that war and similar conflicts.

And the stories, documented or imagined, add to the value of these art objects. Consider how many knives were fashioned from scrap steel, and before that, of flint or other stones, in the households of early Americans.

Work around fireplaces and campfires produced countless works of meaningful art and many are still around somewhere. And they carry with them countless stories that will never be told. But now we must make do with our imaginations. What actually happened can only be imagined.