And Howdy to you Brac 2005, Mister Will Bison has just said it the best way I have ever heard it said. You are beginning a learning curve. I have been shooting cap locks since 1970, but I am certainly no expert when it comes to flint locks, in fact, I acquired my first flintlock last July. A .32 caliber to play with, to see if I wanted to use one for deer hunting. I took it out to my friend Kip's range to shoot it for the first time, and getting the flint positioned so it would make sparks was the first puzzle I encountered. I wish there was a tip I could give you on that, but we just kept moving it until we started getting sparks. I have read elsewhere on this sight that the many of the spanish made locks produce weak sparks, and I know this one is that way. Next, we loaded it up, and got our first "flash in the pan". We dug around in the touch hole with a pick, and the next try, we had ignition. It was all down hill from there. Hang fires, failure to fire at all, lock time varied so bad from shot to shot, that I had time to drive home before it went off on a couple occasions. I went home and cleaned the thing, and after putting it in the gun cabinet, I just sat there looking at it and wondered how anyone had survived while depending on such a contraption for protection and food. My thoughts turned to the first baby sitters (Both parents worked) I and my brother and sister had. Fred and Emma Varnum, our next door neighbors. Fred was born in 1772, and while he hunted or fished most days of the year, he still used the only two guns he had ever owned. A flintlock rifle, and a single barrel flintlock shotgun. I started to think about the way Fred would go about loading one of his guns before getting in his 1920s Buick to go hunting. I remembered he always had a tooth pick or something stuck in the touch hole while he loaded the thing. Being a nosey little boy, I asked him what that did. He told me you had to keep powder out of the touch hole, or it burned like a firecracker fuse, and you got a hang fire. Then I remembered another time when he sat in his horse hide chair with a dinner plate on his lap, grinding some black stuff with his thumb in a table spoon. when I asked what he was doing, he told me he was going to the lake to hunt ducks in the morning. It would be foggy and the stone and frizzen would be damp giving a weak spark. "Your prime has to be fine as dust when the spark's weak." "When you prime, everybody thinks you have to fill the pan. It don't work good that way. You only fill the pan about a third full, and when your shot comes, tip the gun to the outside to get the powder away from the touch hole. That gives the fire a straight shot to the touch hole, and it goes off quicker." Another time, he was messing around the lock with a screwdriver. "What you doing Fred?" "Touch hole was getting to big" he said "Putting in a new one. Here's the most important thing. See how it looks like a screw ? You got to have that slot straight up and down so the fire from the prime goes right up in the hole." Sad to say, those are the only four answers to the 10,000 questions I must have asked him that I can remember, or I could write an owner's manual for flint locks. I took the rifle back out of the cabinet, turned the liner slot straight up, and then grabbed the wife's herb mortar and pestle, and made a priming flask full of "Dust". The next evening I went back out to Kip's, and what a difference. I swear, Ignition seemed as positive and quick as my cap locks. Do these four things, and you will like your flintlock a lot better ! Cowpox
