In 2008 Larry Pletcher did a series of flintlock testing, one was about the touch hole and pan powder locations with respect to their efficacy. His results are interesting and should put to bed a number of perpetuated myths. His data and findings are good to review every so often ....
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Conclusions:
These conclusions are those of the experimenter. You may have different opinions.
I wish to point out that every trial produced a report that sounded as one sound. The fastest (.032) and the slowest (.060) sounded the same. Even though one was almost twice as fast as the other, the sounds were indistinguishable. So my first conclusion is that the human eye and ear are terrible tools to use to evaluate flintlock performance. If differences can be determined by human senses, then the trial was indeed very slow.
The idea to bank powder away from the vent to improve flint performance is flawed thinking. In every test I conducted, the banked away trials came in last. Percentages varied, but banking the powder away was always slower. I found no evidence to support the old bank the prime away from the vent. (In the low vent test, banking powder away was 17% slower; in the high vent test, banking powder away was 23% slower.)
The idea that one should not cover the vent with priming powder because of having to burn through the vent instead of flashing through seems equally flawed. While I did not try to fill the vent, covering the vent did not cause slower times. The closer I could get priming to the vent, the faster and more consistent the results. In fact the consistency I found in positioning the priming powder close to the vent occurred at all vent positions low, level, and high.
The last conclusion involves the reason for this whole experiment proper location for the vent in relationship to the pan. I found that the location of the vent in relation to the pan is far more forgiving that we have believed. Tests when the vent was extremely low or high both gave quick reliable ignition. A look at the chart below shows that all vent positions gave fast ignition when primed close to the vent (This is what we learned in the preliminary tests.) Also all vent positions gave uniformly poor performance when the priming powder was banked away from the vent.
Banked way-Level Prime-Close prime
Low Vent.046.037-.038
Level Vent .043- * .036
High Vent.048.043-.037
*I did not time level priming when testing the level vent/pan position.
I began this series of test thinking that the big variable would be the vent location. However, I am now concluding that it is of minor concern compared to the location of the priming powder in the pan. I still like a vent level with the pan flat - i wont loose sleep over a pan a little high or low.
All of the work represented here was based on igniting the powder artificially using a red-hot copper wire. This was done intentionally to remove the variables in amount, quality, and location of the sparks. In reality the flint shooter must manage his lock to minimize these variables. Regardless of what the experiments show us, the shooter must place priming powder where his sparks will land. Time with his gun will determine this. However the shooter need not be afraid of priming powder too close to the vent that is to be encouraged. It is far better to have the prime too close than too far away.
Topic: Touch holes and pan powder (Read 854 times)