flint

[greggholmes]

Captain Bennet Cuthbertson's 1776 manual for the management of a battalion of infantry wrote

"Flints should always be screwed in firm, between a thin piece of lead, it having a more certain hold, then leather, or any other contrivance. Besides a good one in his piece, a soldier ought to have another in his pouch".

And..... go

[Sir Michael]

I've thought of using lead but at least one lock maker states that the use of lead to cushion flints voids his warranty.  Go figure.

[Stormrider51]

Lead does add mass to the cock/hammer and at least one rifle I tried it with seemed to have a short flint life.  I was lucky to get 30 shots from a flint held with lead while a flint with leather gave me at least twice as many.  I'll also note that the British redesigned the cock on the Brown Bess to make it stronger.  One might assume that they were suffering breakages.  Was the lead a factor?

John

[greggholmes]

There is no way I could do the math to figure the mass pop a thin lead to leather.

[Stormrider51]

Me either!  This is one of those situations where the best I can do is give anecdotal "evidence".  My understanding is that folks would take a ball, pound it out flat, and use it to hold the flint.  I guess that means we could take the ball weight and compare it to a piece of leather the correct size to get the difference.  I don't know that we would have established anything beyond lead = heavy and leather = light.  I do know that I had a guy bring in a rifle with a Chambers flintlock complaining of failures to ignite the pan powder.  On examining the frizzen I saw that there were gouges about 1/3 of the way down the face and few marks below that level.  The flint was being held by lead.  I polished the frizzen and exchanged the lead for leather.  The gun was then a very good sparker and reliably ignited the pan powder.  My theory is that the extra weight in the cock resulted in the frizzen being knocked away in a manner that prevented the flint from scraping down its face.  It's possible I could have solved the problem by installing a stiffer frizzen spring.  What I did was simpler.  I've also seen locks where the cock failed to push the frizzen completely out of the way with the result being a partially opened pan with the flint still resting on the lower frizzen.  My solution was to polish everything and then, if necessary, reduce the frizzen spring tension.  It's possible that a simpler solution might have been going to lead to retain the flint.  Ve get so soon old and so late schmart!

John

[greggholmes]

I did the 'pound flat a ball' but it was to big an had to cut it down with sicssors. I didn't measure it but it was maybe, .010". I don't have a scale to weigh one flattened and trimmed.

[Stormrider51]

Greg,  I'm assuming you have a East India Pattern Brown Bess based on your signature photo.  Middlesex Village?  Have you tried using lead vs leather?  What were the results?  As a side note, I have a MVTC East India on order since 03/12.  Can't wait to start working up loads and seeing results.

John

[greggholmes]

I use leather right now, haven't tried lead yet.

Check the touch hole to breach plug area, that's the only issue I had. Breach plug sits a little deep.

[Stormrider51]

I used to (try to) make a living as a gunsmith.  I still have a close friend who owns a milling machine.  If necessary I can either angle drill the vent or pull the breech plug and face it off until it clears.  The second solution would be my first choice.

John