Snaphance Musket
- Category
- Rifle
- Barrel
- Not recorded
- Weight, empty
- Not recorded
- Introduced
- 1560
About
What it is, and why it matters
The Snaphance Musket is a muzzle-loading smoothbore long arm fitted with a snaphance lock, an early flint-ignition mechanism that first appeared in the late 1550s as an improvement on the snaplock. Striking a flint held in a cock against a separate steel battery, it featured an automatically opening pan cover to keep the priming powder dry until the instant of firing. The snaphance was the mechanical predecessor of the true flintlock and was supplanted across most of Europe by the cheaper, simpler flintlock from around 1620, though it persisted in Northern Italy into the 1750s and in North African arms much later.
The snaphance takes its name from the Dutch 'snaphaan' (pecking hen), a nod to the way its cock snaps forward like a bird pecking. It was the crucial evolutionary step between the costly clockwork wheel-lock and the flintlock that would dominate firearms for the next two centuries.
Specifications vary widely as snaphance muskets were not standardized; the .69-class bore and ranges given are representative of a 17th-century military smoothbore musket.
Specification
Everything measured
IdentityWhat it is, who built it and when.
- Manufacturer
- European Gunmakers (various)
- Category
- Rifle
- Country
- Netherlands
- Status
- Out of production
- Produced
- 1560
ActionHow it cycles, what trips it, and what feeds it.
- Firing mechanism
- Single action
- Trigger
- Single stage
- Capacity
- 1
- Magazine
- Internal
MaterialsEach swatch is the material itself, not a colour chosen to stand for it.
- Barrel
- Steel
- Stock
- Wood
BallisticsFrom the service cartridge, not a handload.
- Effective range
- 90 m
- Rate of fire
- 2 rpm
Trajectory
What the round does downrange
Solved from the muzzle figures and the bullet. The dashed rule is the effective range on the record, and the crosses are the steps the solver returned.
No load solved for this record yetThe flight path is computed from a cartridge and a bullet. This record has no ammunition filed against its chambering, so there is nothing to solve.
Features
What it has
What the record lists as fitted, drawn from the catalogue.
Muzzleloader
Snaphance lock
Automatic pan cover- External flint cock
Standing
How it compares
This record has too few measurements to compare with others yet.
Answers
Questions about the Snaphance Musket
What caliber is the Snaphance Musket?
The Snaphance Musket is chambered in Lead Round Ball (Musket).
How many rounds does the Snaphance Musket hold?
The Snaphance Musket holds 1 rounds, fed from an internal magazine.
Who makes the Snaphance Musket?
The Snaphance Musket is made by European Gunmakers (various) (Netherlands).
When was the Snaphance Musket introduced?
The Snaphance Musket was introduced in 1560.
Compatibility
Which parts fit this firearm
Studio
Every part that mounts on this, resolved
Not a list the maker typed out: the answer comes from the mounts this firearm exposes and the interface each part needs, so it stays right when either one changes.
- Every part that mounts on any firearm in the catalogue
- Interface standards, platforms and fit overrides
- The same answers through the API and the MCP server
Requires a signed-in GunSpec account on the Studio plan. The answer is computed per part, so it is not part of the public record.
Provenance
What the record holds
Every figure above was taken from one of these pages. The confidence reflects how much of the record came from a page a claim can be checked against.
Provenance
Confidence in this record
55%
Stockists
Where to buy
Offers link straight to the shop. GunSpec never takes the order.
No shop has listed this firearm yet
Stock and prices come from the shops themselves. If you sell this firearm, you can list it and it appears here.
List a firearmMCP
Ask an assistant about it
The same record, reached the way a person asks for it rather than the way a program does.
Ask GunSpec
Works with
Point an MCP client at GunSpec and it answers from the catalogue rather than from memory. A free key covers the read tools.
API
The call that returns this record
The same fields, in the same units, from the same endpoint the page reads.
curl --request GET \ --url 'https://api.gunspec.io/v1/firearms/snaphance-musket' \ --header 'X-API-Key: your_key'{ "id": "snaphance-musket", "name": "Snaphance Musket", "manufacturer": { "id": "european-gunmakers", "name": "European Gunmakers (various)", "countryCode": "NL", "foundedYear": null, "website": null, "logoUrl": null, "description": null, "status": null, "defunctYear": null, "stateOwned": null, "makesFirearms": null, "parentId": null, "predecessorId": null, "createdAt": "2026-06-21 23:00:46", "updatedAt": "2026-06-21 23:00:46", "version": "ae2499716368f140cb2c54b33cb7874cfacf68ab79bfe6b2acc27e3d3a4bf13f" }, "category": { "id": "rifle", "name": "Rifle", "description": "Long-barreled firearms designed for accurate shooting" }, "country_of_origin": "NL", "year_introduced": 1560, "barrel_length_mm": null, "weight_empty_g": null, "action_type": null}