Most folks know Williamsburg to be one of the premiere living-history sites in the nation. What few perhaps realize, however, is in an effort to preserve that history to its most intricate detail, the majority of trades and skills being demonstrated at Williamsburg are done for real. The blacksmiths there are actually forging tools, the wheelwrights are making wheels and the gunsmiths, well, they're making firearms. In this edition of the Preserving the Skills video series, check out the fine art of gunsmithing at Colonial Williamsburg.
By using surviving artifacts, eyewitness testimony, accurately reproduced uniforms, original firearms and the thorough study of battle sites, Don Troiani has done more than imagine what happened 250 years ago. His art is as close as it can get to a true representation of what period combat would have looked like.
While thousands of firearms were used in and around the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, few survive today. One survivor is the flintlock fowler used by Capt. John Parker of the Lexington militia.
The Mossberg 500 is one of the most popular pump-action shotguns ever made. That doesn’t keep the company from making updates and improvements, as evidenced in the new-for-2025 590M Standoff and 500 Slugster series.
Warthog USA’s V-Sharp Elite A4 pairs the company’s most feature-packed portable blade-sharpening unit with a detachable wooden base for added stability.
On April 19, 1775, 250 years ago, approximately 80 armed militiamen from Lexington gathered on their village green to confront several hundred British infantrymen. The events of that morning began a conflict that would ultimately establish the United States of America.