by Wayne Nelson ASG

There are a number of sportsmen and women in New Zealand today using flintlock rifles, pistols, and shotguns. The tradition is now well established for it is at least 30 years old with regard to modern contemporary guns. This writer well remembers seeing in 1968 a beautiful flintlock Pennsylvania Long Rifle made by the outstanding American rifle maker Royland Southgate, owned by a New Zealander who regularly, and successfully, used it here for deer stalking.

Owners of flintlocks will be aware of the problems of ignition which are characteristic of this type of gun. Assuming that the flints used will be good quality ones made by the flint knappers of Brandon in Suffolk for example, two relatively simple problems will be a lack of good case-hardening in the frizzen, and incorrect setting of the flint. Re-hardening a frizzen is a straight forward exercise in basic engineering. Setting a flint correctly however, is a topic which suffers from a lamentable lack of information and discussion, so I have set some thoughts down here which are based on experience and observation. I do not claim that my solutions are necessarily correct; I can only claim that they have worked for me. Members may be interested in the sources I have used to develop my theories.

Fitting the Flint into the Jaws of the Cock

A common fault that I have observed with factory made Italian flintlocks, and also with the American Siler flintlock, is that the cock is placed too close to the frizzen with the result that when the cock is set at half bent and the pan closed, the flint will tend to push the frizzen open a fraction, just enough to be annoying. Common sense dictates that at the very least it is desirable that priming powder be not afforded an opportunity to leak out of the pan, apart form which it is desirable that the pan be tight shut so that it may retain whatever waterproof qualities it may have. In these circumstances the only solution to the problem is to set the flint so that the distance between it and the face of the frizzen is at least the thickness of a piece of paper. I always calculate this distance using a sheet of standard white bond typing paper.

One of the reasons why I recommend this minimum distance (apart from the reasons given above) is that by not having the leading edge of the flint resting hard up against the frizzen one will eliminate the risk of shattering or chipping it at the moment of firing, which is what usually happens if the flint is placed too close to the frizzen. Instead of scraping evenly down the face of the frizzen, as it should, the flint will tend to hammer into the frizzen and skip down the remainder of the face, creating at the initial point of impact the well known deep (rather than shallow) horizontal gouge across the face of the frizzen about three quarters of the way up its face. Other contributing causes of this phenomenon will also be the thick, untapered springs found on most commercial locks, and the shallow slope found on the lock tumbler where the mainspring radius bears. This latter modern design fault can be rectified by carefully grinding a steeper slope with a slight curve. Sufficient to say here that the fault causes the mainspring to exert an indifferent force on the cock at the moment of pulling the trigger instead of progressively increasing the force as the cock falls on its downward arc. The combined effect of these causes not only inhibits proper sparking, it does nothing to help maintain the quality of a frizzen which may have relatively shallow case hardening.

Makers of high quality guns in the eighteen and early nineteenth centuries like the Barbars, Griffin, Twogg, the Mantons, the Eggs, Knubley, Nock, and wogdon, were all aware of these problems and if you look at illustrations of their guns, pistols and rifles, you will see that they set the cock well back from the frizzen in half bent position. The knowledge of the old masters, however, does not seem to be reflected in the modern product. If we take one common factory made Italian flintlock available in New Zealand today, the Pedersoli, the problem that specifically affects the Pedersoli rifle flintlock, is that the cock jaws are really too small to fit in an average ¾" sized flint. A critical factor is the depth of the Pedersoli jaws; they are simply not deep enough and, combined with the closeness of the cock to the frizzen, this creates a problem with the length of the flint which unfortunately is nearly always too long. As an addenda to this point, the width of a quality flint is never a problem. It is desirable (as is the case with average sized flints) that the flint cover the whole width of the face of the frizzen. The problem therefore is to get the flint to fit into the jaws so that a paper thickness depth may be set between the flint and the frizzen. A very thin, rather than a thick piece of leather to hold the flint in the jaws of the cock helps here, but usually the solution requires reducing the length of the flint.

Reducing the Length of a Flint & Knapping

The only satisfactory way I have found of reducing the length of a flint is by grinding it back by hand. To otherwise attempt this operation by using, for example, a cold chisel as I did, is fatal as (a) flint is extremely hard and (b) a normal light tap with the chisel will not even mark the flint. A heavy whack with the chisel however, will shatter the flint. I should perhaps say here that the cold chisel I used is only ¼" wide, and the hammer I used with it a small model makers hammer. This was clearly an unsatisfactory way of tackling the task however. Without a doubt, I suppose the only satisfactory way to either sharpen the end of a flint or to reduce its length, is to use a small flint knapper’s hammer. The problem is what to do if one doesn’t have, or cannot gain convenient access to, such a tool.

The idea of grinding a flint came to me from reading Elsdon Best’s The Stone Implements of the Maori, first published in 1912 and which earned Best the Hector Memorial Medal in 1914. According to Elsdon Best the ancient Maori used grindstones to dress all of their stone axes, adzes, chisels and jewellery (greenstone). There was no rotary gindstone, never the other way round. The Grindstones were sandstones about three inches thick and of a shape that could usually be hand held. The Maoris did all their grinding at the rivers edge so that the work could be continually lubricated by water. Hand grinding in this fashion, is, I believe, the only satisfactory way of dressing a gun flint. It may also be possible to perform the operation on a rotary grindstone provided a constant jet of water is directed onto the stone.

The work involved in hand grinding a piece of flint is labour intensive and requires a great deal of patience. Flint is very, very hard. It takes a minimum of about four hours rubbing of the flint on a grindstone to reduce the length of the flint so the work is best done in stages once a decision is made to do it of course; with some flints, performing this task will mean that they cannot be turned around when one end becomes blunt. The grindstone needs to be a conventional rectangular sharpening stone with one side coarse and the other side fine. Undertake to do the reduction of the length of the flint on the coarse side first, using only water as a lubricant. Finish off on the fine side, again using water as a lubricant.

Although this work is very hard, I have found that the results are correspondingly very satisfactory once the flint has been fitted into a thin leather cushion in the cock, and the distance from the frizzen face set at the thickness of a piece of paper as suggested above.

When adjusted in this way the flint appears to scrape down the face of the frizzen much more easily than it would otherwise, and the result is a consistent shower of sparks as distinct from only one or two, and then none at all, when the flint is too long. I should emphasise here that this adjustment to the length of a flint is a problem that needs to be addressed only in relation to commercially made rifle locks and not musket locks. The latter by virtue of being nearly twice the size of rifle locks, usually are found to have a distance of at least 1.5cm between the flint and the face of the frizzen when the cock is set at half bent. In these circumstances there is no need to reduce the length of the flint.

Knapping

Reducing the length of a flint by the above suggested method is the hardest and most laborious part of dressing a flint. Comparatively speaking it is easier to knapp the flint on its sharp end when the flint becomes blunt after long usage (after about 50 shots). By "knapping" I mean here lightly grinding the bevel placed there by the flint knapper by the same grinding process described above. Sam Fadala, in one of his books, suggests knapping a flint with a sharp knife and gives an illustration of a man performing this operation with the flint on the gun. There may be a way of doing this but on trying it myself I found that as flint is very hard, the knife just slid along the bevel. By pushing hard I succeeded in taking a large chip off the end of the flint leaving a "U" shaped gap instead of the desired straight, sharp edge.

Again, the only completely satisfactory solution is no doubt to perform the work with a flint knapper’s hammer, as Sam Fadala is careful to point out. Failing that, I suggest the use of the grindstone. Only the fine side of the sharpening stone should be used for this work, again using only water as a lubricant. As the amount of angle required to sharpen an existing bevel is very small the amount of hand work involved in performing this operation is minimal.

If the flint is rubbed vigorously on the grindstone, a white powder is eventually produced unless the grindstone is wetted again. The powder does not materially assist the grinding process and it should be periodically washed off when wetting the grindstone. The Grindstone should in fact bet wetted frequently. Without water acting as a lubricant, the flint will become very hot with rubbing, apart from being ineffectively ground.

Eventually a grindstone will become grooved when it is used for the above purposes. This is to be expected. The same thing happened to the grindstones of the Ancient Maori which, along with the implements made by them, are rare collectors items and museum pieces now.

Setting the Flint

Once a flint has been dressed in this fashion, the next problem that I believe has to be tackled is the correct setting of it in the jaws of the cock. By ‘setting’ I mean not simply the gap factor discussed above, but in particular which way up the flint is positioned. The aim of this exercise is to obtain a shower of good bright sparks, and yet the setting of a lint is a detail that is scarecely ever mentioned in the literature on flintlocks. Be that as it may, English gun flints generally have two distinct sides or faces, i.e. a flat face and a bevelled face. The English Guns Review of January 1995, Vol. 35 No.1, p34, reviewing the Pedersoli Potsdam Musket, states "Flints should be … fixed intot he jaws of the cock in a pad of thin leather with the flat face of the flint uppermost" (my italics). An interesting and revealing illustration of this practice may be found in the illustrations of eighteenth century guns and rifles found in Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, by W. Keith Neal & D.H.L. Back, where all the illustrations show the flint being positioned with the flat face of the flint uppermost, except where the flints are knapped with two bevelled edges. The English setting (as I will refer to it now) with the flat face uppermost is magnificently illustrated in illustrations 239, 240, 435, 437.

If the setting of these flints is indeed the same as it was two hundred years ago (a point which admittedly requires further research) it therefore seems reasonable to assume that positioning the flint this way has traditionally been, and still is, an English practice not apparently adopted by the Americans who, according to one American writer (Joseph Byers), adopt instead the more pragmatic approach of setting the flint in the position that it best sparks in. This is an acceptable practice in my experience, however for some locks at least, I tend to think that the English practice is right if you consider the downward curved angle the flint strikes the frizzen at. Coming down at this angle, the bevelled face of the flint on the underside possibly facilitates a better shower of sparks by directing them straight down into the pan off the angle of the bevel.

Having made these observations, I am bound to admit that the English setting will be appropriate only fi the angle of the closed frizzen in relation to the flint allows sufficient distance at the top of the frizzen for the flint to strike it about a quarter of the way down its face. With a large musket lock at least, I have found that the English setting produces superb results. The difference is literally the difference between one desultory spark (with a conventional flint setting) and a shower of sparks which fizzle and pop when the English setting is used, apparently bearing out the wisdom of the advice given in the Guns Review article.

Practical experience with the Pedersoli rifle lock, however, shows that the English setting doesn’t work with this lock, and that it suits best with this lock to position the flint with the bevel uppermost. This is, I think, because of the relative angle of the frizzen. With the bevel uppermost, i.e., the reverse of what I call the English setting, the leading (striking) edge of the flint is positioned lower down from the top of the frizzen, where it should be, or about just over three quarters of the way up from the bottom of the frizzen face, whereas with the flat side of the flint uppermost, the leading edge strikes at the very top of the face of the frizzen. This is too high up to enable these relatively delicate and small flintlocks to work efficiently because what invariably happens is that the downward arc of the flint is interrupted by the increased rearward curve which can be seen on the top face of the frizzen, with the result that the frizzen does not receive a sufficiently hard enough push and scrape from the flint to enable it to fully open and fully reveal the pan to the relatively few sparks that do actually come down. Where this occurs on any lock, I adopt the practice of knapping a slight bevel on the leading edge of the flat side of the flint but set the flint in the jaws in a conventional manner with the flat on the underside. Very often I find that my small bevel on the flat side follows a slight bevel that has already been put there by the flint knappers.

Conclusion

One of the critical factors in obtaining good flint efficiently with many commercially made flintlocks, is as I have suggested, the distance that obtains between the leading edge of the flint and the face of the frizzen. This is a problem which afflicts small rifle locks rather than musket locks, and it generally requires reducing the length of the flint. In this sense reducing the length of a flint, and’or positioning the flint so that there is a gap between it and the frizzen will, to some extent, mitigate the more serious design faults built into the modern commercially manufactured flintlock. Setting a flint in either the English (bevel down) or bevel uppermost manner, is a matter which only becomes critical according to the type of lock involved. As a general rule my experience has been that the English setting works best for musket locks whereas the bevel uppermost setting seems to work better for small rifle locks but not necessarily for larger rifle locks like the Siler. Either setting produces sparks, but the rule should be that the setting chosen has to suit the lock.

References
Best, Elsdon The Stone Implements of the Maori. First published 1912. Reprinted without Textual Alteration, Government Printer, 1974. V, Methods of Manufacture of Ordinary Stone Tools. PP53-55. VI, Grinding-Stones (Hoanga) PP99-110.
Neal, W. Keith &
Back, D.H.L. Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790. The History of John Twigg and the Packington Guns. Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications. London. 1975.Byers, Joseph W. "First Time, Every Time – Flintlocks" Guns Illustrated 1993, (25^th Edition) PP 32-35.
Fadala, Sam The Complete Black Powder Handbook DBI Books Inc. Northfield, Ill. 1979. Ch. 6, PP44-46.
Rowe, Mike "Building a Siler Flintlock" Foresight New Zealand Black Powder Shooters Federation Inc, Nov. 1992 – Nov. 1993.Guns Review "The Pedersoli Potsdam Musket". January 1995, Vol. 35, No.1