First Flintlock

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Gus Chiggins

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Hi. I hope this weekend finds all of you well.
I've finally decided to put the cap guns aside for awhile and learn how to make some sparks. I sold some black rifles today and generated enough zlotskis to purchase a Pedersoli Frontier .45 in maple. I'm not a complete newbie to flintlocks. I've been paying attention to the shooters around me and have had my marksmanship discounted as being less than honorable for using a percussion rifle. All in good fun of course. It's payback time dammit! Lol. I've heard about 'tuning a lock' and am assuming it's got to do with flint size and placement. I'm going to be looking for fast ignition. Tips appreciated.
 
Fill your pan half full...or just at or just above the flash hole....slosh your prime to and fro to fill the flash hole.

If you fill your pan full, it takes a while for the prime to burn down to the flash hole. It sounds silly...but trust me.

Pick your vent hole(flash hole) to keep a clear channel .

The flint will cut you deep. Treat it accordingly.
 
Hi. I hope this weekend finds all of you well.
I've finally decided to put the cap guns aside for awhile and learn how to make some sparks. I sold some black rifles today and generated enough zlotskis to purchase a Pedersoli Frontier .45 in maple. I'm not a complete newbie to flintlocks. I've been paying attention to the shooters around me and have had my marksmanship discounted as being less than honorable for using a percussion rifle. All in good fun of course. It's payback time dammit! Lol. I've heard about 'tuning a lock' and am assuming it's got to do with flint size and placement. I'm going to be looking for fast ignition. Tips appreciated.

No, "tuning" a lock has to do with smoothing surfaces that rub, adjusting the sear and tumbler, and with the alignment of the jaw to the pan in the forward position.

For "fast" ignition in a Frontier, you want to check the position of the flash hole. It should be centered in the pan and level with the pan.

Touch Hole Location.jpg

This is normally the case with the Frontier, so you should have no worries. The Frontier does have a touch hole liner, which does allow for correction, or replacement if it ever gets worn. Normally the touch hole liner is not removed.

The Frontier has some additional quirks.....

The lock is held on the rifle by a single lock bold, AND a small wood screw, the screw being forward of the frizzen spring. You need to be careful not to over tighten this wood screw when done cleaning the lock and replacing the lock into the stock, and avoid stripping out the wood.
The breech is not a simple one, and you will need to buy a .22 or .32 caliber pistol brush, to get down into the chamber that rests within the breech to prevent carbon buildup over time. Pipe cleaners will help as well
The front sight post is very thick, and should be replaced with a thin front sight post available from Track of The Wolf. I have always preferred thin silver. Otherwise the sight picture will be similar to trying to center a quarter on top of the end of a 2x4. IF you want the most accuracy that you can get, the front sight must be swapped out. This makes it much simpler for your eye to get a good sight picture on a target.
The ramrods tend to be junk; not straight grained. It's a quirk of a lot of factory guns and rifles. I'd suggest that you get an aftermarket ramrod, also available from Track of The Wolf, as the Pedersoli ramrod will fail, as it's a matter of time.
Sometimes the Pedersoli barrels have been rifled by machines with rather new cutters, and small burrs remain which will cut your patches, and you should be using patched round ball, btw in the rifle (imho). No worries, you just need to run a small piece of "green scrubbie" pad (as used to clean pots and pans; bought from the supermarket) up and down the inside of the barrel a few times to get the burrs out. It won't harm the barrel.

Unless you're going for boar, the 125 grain .440 round ball will be fine on deer. Highly accurate, very little recoil. The .440 all lead, patched round ball has been working quite well on deer for 250 years.

LD
 
Hi Dave. Thanks for the info on the Frontier. I don't have the rifle yet. Maybe by next weekend. I'll definitely want a thinner front sight blade. I wouldn't be brave enough to use the wood ramrod. I'll probably make one out of delrin.
I've polished the engagement points on the sears and tumblers of my cap guns so I'm okay there.
I'll probably be shooting round ball only and the odd maxi ball for fun.
Thanks again.
 
Hi Dave. Thanks for the info on the Frontier. I don't have the rifle yet. Maybe by next weekend. I'll definitely want a thinner front sight blade. I wouldn't be brave enough to use the wood ramrod. I'll probably make one out of delrin.
I've polished the engagement points on the sears and tumblers of my cap guns so I'm okay there.
I'll probably be shooting round ball only and the odd maxi ball for fun.
Thanks again.

Quite Welcome, I think for full stocked rifle fans, the Frontier is the best choice in factory rifles right now...OH and as the saying goes, One More Thing...,


I like the Frontier because of the large lock, and I was very happy by using 3Fg for both the main charge and the pan...in a .50 and a .54..., so with your .45 it should work even better.
I like to keep things simple, and having a different device to prime the pan with 4Fg always complicated stuff for me.

LD
 
If you look on youtube for the poster duelist1954 he has many videos on shooting flint lock guns. He is also a poster here but he doesn't come around very often.

And you picked my favorite caliber by the way.

 
As LD says use the same powder in the pan as in the barrel, it simplifies things a lot. I use just enough powder to cover the bottom of the pan. This is me being frugal, er cheap, as I don't like to waste powder, my ignition has always been fast and reliable with that small amount in the pan.
 
I watched several videos of Pedersoli Frontier flintlocks being fired and they seemed to have very fast ignition.
If I had a flintlock I wouldn't hesitate to prime with 4F, and Swiss Null B is even faster, as long as the issue of the priming powder absorbing moisture wasn't a problem.
It's only a small separate 4F priming dispenser.
A powder horn would still need to be tipped twice no matter which dispenser is used for priming, once for loading the main charge and then again for priming the pan.
If the priming dispenser has a spring valve it could be easier to meter with, and its small size could be handier to use for priming than a larger powder horn or flask.
 
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Huh ?
Then it burns like a fuse.....[/QUOTE
Weeeelllll.....when you're talking about lock time, if you over fill the pan, then shower sparks down on top, you get a big flash and smoke before the powder even burns down to the flash hole.
Of course, I am talking fractions of a second.

I like to tap on the stock to get my prime just right in the pan.
 
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slosh your prime to and fro to fill the flash hole
Huh ?
Then it burns like a fuse....
The question wasn't about over-filling the pan.
The question centered on filling up the flashhole/channel.
... which then acts like a delay fuse rather than an instantaneous flashover path.


,
 
Insert a touchhole pick in before loading. Load. Then remove the pick. This leaves a clear channel for the flash. Prime with 4F or Null B, preferably the latter. You don't need much, just a thin layer on the entire bottom of the pan. You want the first spark to hit priming powder.
 
Good for you. I've always said that percussion caps were a passing fad.
Correctly set up and maintained a rock lock will fire very fast, in fact a guy who badmouthed flinters showed up one day with some sort of odd duck 1/2 stock .45 and was very put out that a Pedersoli .40 my daughter was shooting actually was quicker.
I think it was really dirty, but didnt tell him that.
 
20210303_194715.jpg 20210303_203142.jpg 20210303_195422.jpg 20210303_194636.jpg The Frontier finally showed up. It's much more slender than I expected. It only weighs 7 lbs. It came with a flint installed in lead sheet. It makes sparks! I'm really glad I didn't get the maple deluxe version. The brass patchbox and side plate would've hid a lot of the wood. The sights are a good match for my eyes. The front sight is thin enough that I should be able to hit a squirrel in the head at 24 yds. I hope :) Thank you for all your replies.
 
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