Flintlock pistol, rifle.

I have started to make a copy of a flintlock pistol, the gun I have was a flintlock but many years ago they upgraded it to a percussion. The copy will be non firing, I can't bore the barrel anyway as its around 8 inches long.

My question is ,when the days of battle using flintlocks how is it that after firing then reloading with gunpowder the powder does not ignite ,as there must be embers in the barrel after firing not only once but many times

Bob

I'm a vintage gun owner and have made several working replicas including a wheelock pistol which is posted on this forum somewhere.

In answer to your question then we must presume that the small amount of powder in a pistol would leave embers no more than a few seconds. Cannons however were different and a charge as high as 16 Lbs was used in the British 68 pound cannon. A swabbing rod was quickly shoved in and out before the next charge went in and a wet sponge after about ten shots to cool the barrel

The "cook-off" is why your powder flask has a special shutter so only one load can go and not the whole lot. Blowing down the barrel until smoke stops coming out of the flash hole makes you look like you are using Goth lipstick but is quite popular.

It's not that difficult to make a bore that long - on my cannon I did it with a 9/16" slotdrill threaded on the shank to take 2 silver steel extensions:

Came out straight enough to slide a stick of 9/16" silver steel down it, and only a couple of thou oversize at muzzle.

My understanding is that it's the touch hole you better not drill through .

I've always thought that paper - and especially cloth - cartridge residue was what posed the main risk of embers. Cartridges of any sort were not usual for pistols, and for muskets and rifles they were usually emptied down the bore before loading ball, and the material used as wadding over the top, so driven out on gunfire.

Edited By Mick B1 on 12/09/2022 10:20:02

Thanks for the replies. Good idea for the barrel Mick.

Bob

Artillery is much more my thing than small-arms, but the risk being due to burning cartridge residue is my understanding too. It's more likely to happen in a big gun than a small one because big cartridges, actually bags, have to be made of thicker stronger material. And it gets worse the more the gun is fired, because the barrel can heat up enough to ignite the powder on it's own.

It was usual to worm-out and then swab muzzle-loading cannon with a wet sponge before reloading:

A decent description of the drill here. It starts by saying: Having a musket load cook off on you is a nuisance. Toasted fingers, a bit of a scare, but a little Bactine and you're all right. Cannon charges start around a quarter-pound of powder, and go up from there...

Note the need for the cannon's vent (touch-hole) to be sealed with a thumb while the charge is inserted. One of my US Civil War books mentions hot cannon commonly fired as soon as the thumb was lifted off, presumably because the powder was cooking and an ember was in the chamber.

Gunpowder has caused a huge number of accidents because it ignites easily at low temperature - about 250°C.

I think it was Marshal Saxe who first commented that his army needed about a million musket cartridges to kill one enemy! That means there must have been a fair number of own-goals due to accidents, but I've never seen any statistics. In modern times it's known that pistols issued to the military cause far more damage to the home team than they do to the enemy, but they're retained for symbolic and morale reasons. Perhaps it's easier to imagine the possibility of a heroic Hollywood style personal encounter than an invisible artillery observer sending your map reference to a battery of field guns 5 miles away...

Dave

For my Wheelock holster pistol barrel, (which is 2 feet long) I got hold of some 1" pipe with 1/2" bore which allowed considerable taper down to the muzzle as on the real thing

Bags made of silk are used to hold propellant in modern breech loading weapons like the M109 Howitzer, I have never seen any residual left in the bore.

In fact, ramming the projectile would obviate any left residual in the chamber.

The worst situation is after ramming the shell and loading the propellant, that on elevating the barrel the shell slips back from the rifling and sits on the propellant with dire results.

I had a berretta O/U blackpowder shotgun, loading powder by flask, topped with some paper under the shot.

Old adage, if you want to shoot him dead, ram your power, not the lead.

Silk propellant bags were certainly in use for cordite before WW1 - black powder charges for muzzle-loading cannon were at least sometimes bagged in cotton or shalloon, which I think could've had a higher risk of residue.

Some officer during the Dardanelles bombardment wrote that it was the silk bags that caused naval guns using the supposedly 'smokeless' propellant to generate hundreds of cubic yards of dark smoke. I once tried to test this with scraps of compressed silk stuffed into cordite 303 rounds in place of the little wad they had, but they were as smokeless as the rest...

Queen Elizabeth class battleships were outfitted with 'any elevation' loading arrangements to avoid having to depress the big guns to near-horizontal between salvos, but it was found that hydraulic demand in battle could starve the rammer motors, with the extremely alarming result that the shell's driving band might fail to wring to the rifling leed, and the projectile follow the rammer out on withdrawal. Therefore actual use of the feature was limited to low elevation angles, though it still saved a certain amount of time and precision.

Interesting replies, thanks. Making a flintlock or any other pistol or rifle that can fire is illegal if its not got some form of non detonation, does making a Canon fall in this category.

Bob

Yes, anything that can be considered a "lethal barelled weapon", at least that used to be the form of words. That means no vent or touchhole.

I think theoretically it's possible to get a Firearm Certificate and some form of permission to manufacture such a gun, but you'd probably need to be a member of some historical association - it would certainly be complicated and likely expensive. There may be people on here who'd know more, but the safe option is not to bore to full chamber depth.

It's still perfectly legal to own most types of antique muzzle loading weapons but not to fire them without meeting certain regulations. What I find incredible is the ease of which you can obtain gunpowder in the form of fireworks. In theory anyone could make a crude gun from a piece of pipe with deadly intent and a few fireworks.

There is no reason why you could not test a home made lock using priming powder from a firework as I have done many times in the past, just seeing a flash in the pan is very satisfying after all the effort used to make the lock by hand.

It would seem safest to drill the barrel for an inch or two only for appearance, and no touch-hole.

I have seen an original flint-lock gun demonstrated with a small amount of black powder in the firing-pan, and that is enough to show the action. I don't the legality of a replica that works only to that extent, unable actually to hold a charge in the breech, as the only ignition is a literal "flash in the pan".

(Not detonate: as I understand it, gun-powder burns but does not detonate. That is a characteristic of high-explosives, and means the flame-front passes through the material at its own speed of sound.)

Wouldn't a working fire-arm need not only the right certificate but also be 'proof-tested' for physical safety?

'

As for a "canon".... I'm not sure a clergyman would be considered a dangerous weapon!

When I think back to the 1960's I used to fire these old guns quite a lot as did some of my friends, the one in the photo is a late 18th century 6ft long Arab musket made so you could hook the stock under your arm and fire from a camel or horse whilst galloping along! The lock on it is a snaphaunce which predates the flintlock as it has a sliding pan cover and separate steel frizzen.

When I lived there my dad and I used to fire it at the coalhouse door with 1/2" round ledger weights, it had a number of them embedded in it right up to the day the house was sold 6 years ago. Generally though pistols were fired using a wad of tissue paper so you still got a bang but no danger of barrel exploding.

Edited By vic newey on 13/09/2022 11:01:37

Back in the flintlock period, the military used paper cartridges which carried the correct amount of power and the musket or pistol ball. The firer had to bite the end off the cartridge off pour the power into the barrel and then the wrapper and the ball before ramping the whole lot down with the ram rod. Misfires due to the fine remains of cartridge paper did happen but very unlikely due to the slow rates of fire and the fact that the paper part of the cartridge was blown out of the barrel along with the ball. Has stated cannons used cloth and even tin containers to hold small shot and the power was in cloth bags. However the reason for washing the cannons out was mainly down to the greater risk of the cannon misfiring due to the build up of heat within the barrel which could set off the powder.

Also some exempted cartridge weapons under 'Section 58' - but they, or the muzzle-loaders, have to be *actual antiques*. Recent repros or own manufactures don't qualify. If you decide to shoot them (the test is having or seeking to obtain ammunition), then they are (or were when I was a shooter) treated as shotguns or section 1 firearms as appropriate to their design, and will require the relevant Police certificate..

Back in the 1960s, some fireworks contained decent black powder, but AFAIK more recent products contain flash powder or other unspecified formulations far too fast-burning, or otherwise dangerously unsuitable, to be used as working propellant.

Edited By Mick B1 on 13/09/2022 12:24:27

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It's listed as the spark that set of the Indian mutiny or as now called the rebellion, The British cartridges were greased with animal fat and it quickly went around the Muslim soldiers that it was pig fat.

When I was a member of a rifle and pistol club back in the 70's, one of the members brought along a muzzle loading pistol he had bought while on holiday in Spain, not old, but quite a good looking replica, around half inch bore. Nobody had any idea how much powder to use, so 2 measures of a .45 ACP cartridge case were used followed by a lead ball. To get a good view of the flash, the lights were dimmed and we all stood at about the 20 yard point of the 25 yard range. He fired the thing and there was a huge bang, lots of smoke and we never did find where the ball went. I think that was the only time that gun ever got fired.

My cousin has a Martini Henry that he brought back from Nepal with cartridges, and he fired that. Looking at how thin the barrel is, you wouldn't get me firing the thing. The whole gun has been covered with that metal filigree beloved of that part of the world.

Edited By old mart on 13/09/2022 21:29:29

I read once that a measure of powder for a pistol was determined by pouring black powder of a ball of the caliber of the pistol until a cone of powder was formed.