AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Black Powder Shooting => Topic started by: sdilts on June 14, 2010, 04:43:47 AM
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Has anyone heard of soaking flints in kerosene? A guy at our shooting match said that he read years ago that you should soak your flints in kerosene. He couldn't remember what the benefits of doing this were, but he kept his in a small jar of kerosene anyway. I sure have never heard of this before.
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Dont know about soaking in kerosene, but M.R. Harrington when doing Anthro field work with the Lenape recorded a tradition of keeping your flit burried right outside the door to your house to keep it "Fresh"
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Man, we gotta get out and shoot more !!!!!!!!
;D
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http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-307924.html
The claim is soaking them in coal oil or kero prolongs flint life because it keeps them from becoming 'brittle.'
Don't sound too plausible to me, but that's the claim.
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Over the years, I tried soaking flints in oil, kerosene, and water. The only difference I found was the oil and kerosene were harder to remove from the flints than water. None seemed to last longer or spark better than a flint kept dry in the drawer.
I'm beginning to wonder if the people who come up with these solutions to nonexistent problems have been soaking their heads in Kerosene and oil. ::)
God bless
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Has anyone heard of soaking flints in kerosene? A guy at our shooting match said that he read years ago that you should soak your flints in kerosene. He couldn't remember what the benefits of doing this were, but he kept his in a small jar of kerosene anyway. I sure have never heard of this before.
Flint is impervious to water/oil/petroleum distillate (I have read). This is a colossal waste.
Dan
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If ya soaks 'em in oiel they's burn better! ;D :-*
Old Ford
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GOOD LORD!
What next! Why do people take something simple and complicate the p**** out of it? It's a rock, theres no need to "keep it fresh" It's been in the earth since creation and hasn't gone bad yet. I would have posted earlier but I was absolutely speechless. WOW!
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What if you put them in potting soil and water them every day? ;D I wonder turn small flints to fit a musket ;D or a flint tree.
Ephraim
sorry
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Over the years, I tried soaking flints in oil, kerosene, and water. The only difference I found was the oil and kerosene were harder to remove from the flints than water. None seemed to last longer or spark better than a flint kept dry in the drawer.
I'm beginning to wonder if the people who come up with these solutions to nonexistent problems have been soaking their heads in Kerosene and oil. ::)
God bless
I wouldn't be surprised if the people that think this stuff up actually do not even own a flintlock, and I have my doubts they have ever shot one - or even own a rifle. IMHO from a lot of stuff I've read on internet websites, I really doubt half the people commenting on these sites actually leave their key board to go shooting.
Just my opinion...
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Sorta like soaking hickory ramrods in petroleum distalates eh, or using the golden mean for all your proportions.. ::) ::) ::)
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Tim.
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I couldn't resist..........sorry........... :-[ :-[ :-[ :-[
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Over the years, I tried soaking flints in oil, kerosene, and water. The only difference I found was the oil and kerosene were harder to remove from the flints than water. None seemed to last longer or spark better than a flint kept dry in the drawer.
I'm beginning to wonder if the people who come up with these solutions to nonexistent problems have been soaking their heads in Kerosene and oil. ::)
God bless
I wouldn't be surprised if the people that think this stuff up actually do not even own a flintlock, and I have my doubts they have ever shot one - or even own a rifle. IMHO from a lot of stuff I've read on internet websites, I really doubt half the people commenting on these sites actually leave their key board to go shooting.
Just my opinion...
Candle Snuffer- I know you just read about soaking flints in kero right here on the Web, BUT - that "old wives tail" is a lot older than any of us here. I agree with what you said, however, about much of the drivel on the web. Since that is the information station of today, that's were we hear this bull. Prior, it was in the gun rags and books written by learners.
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I have no idea whether it works or not (never tried it), but have heard the one about soaking the flints in water. Maybe the idea about treating a stone with something isn't so far-fetched since some precious stones were/are oiled to help eliminate the appearance of imperfections in the stones and enhance color (such as in emeralds). I see fellows at the CLA Show looking at the edges of flints with a pen light behind to help reveal any imperfections/flaws in the edge. If, indeed, the old wives tail has been around for a long time, maybe they thought soaking in something helped with imperfections in the flint?
James Levy
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The idea of soaking a flint may have migrated from the realm of knapping flint & chert to make arrowheads and tools, or for decorative jewelry applications. Heat treating and soaking in water is sometimes done to improve workability and appearance.
For them truly interested, you might start with:
http://www.beau.lib.la.us/lib/features/2008/Lithic_Trivia/08%20June%2008%20%20%20Lithic%20Trivia%20Update/Lithic%20Trivia%20%232%20Updated%208Oct06/WORKSHOP%20AND%20L.P.'S%20JAN%2006/Knapping%20student%20Lithic%20Tool%20Replication%20LP%202006.doc
and scroll down to Part II where they talk about "Alteration of Chert". Now, I only saw where they talked about soaking in water, but it's pretty obvious soaking in Kerosene instead of water would have the advantage of avoiding any chance that your flint would rust. ::)
SCL
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Is soaking the ramrod a waste too? I have never tried it, but thought about it.
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Is soaking the ramrod a waste too? I have never tried it, but thought about it.
If you love the smell of kerosene, its a great thing to do :) . Otherwise, its a waste.
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Is soaking the ramrod a waste too? I have never tried it, but thought about it.
Soaking ramrods does work extremely well...but only if the rod is soaked in the urine of 72 vestal virgins for a fortnight prior to a blue moon. :D
God bless
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They used to recommend soaking a ramrod in coal oil in Dixie GunWorks old catalog. Never tried it and will ask Rich Pierce if I should soak the flints I bought from him. Kind of think I know what his answer may be. Remember a flint sparks best if proportioned so that it is 1.638 X a long as it is wide.
DP
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"...I have no idea whether it works or not (never tried it), but have heard the one about soaking the flints in water..."
A few years ago when the rumors started flying about Tom Fuller getting ready to retire, I got the idea of starting to search for some other black english flint manufacturer SOMEWHERE...I spent many hours over many days surfing and discovered more about black english flint mining and general flint knapping than I ever wanted to.
But, in one of the mining articles there was reference to water and flint rock...and it went on to say that as they're mining flint in underground mines, it's not all that uncommon to break off a big chunk that was part of a void and have gallons of water come pouring out...had been trapped in there for how gosh knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of years but didn't get absorbed by the surrounding flint rock.
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This concept of "oiled gun flints" goes back at least to the 18th century! I have found them listed that way in colonial store records. Eight or ten years ago I posted the same basic question on another message board and got the same basic responses---so it may be a really old wives tale or sales gimmick. The oiled flints listed were more expensive than the regular ones in the same records!
I soaked some flints in water for three years and couldn't detect any difference.
Gary
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I have tried to stay out of this as it seems this discussion has happened several times--perhaps on another website. I am a geologist with a minor in mineralogy. Flint [mineralogically =chert] is a cryptocrystalline [some amorphous silica] quartz family mineral composed mainly of SiO2 [plus traces of impurities that give it color. It can hold a small amount of water in its structure, but is basically impervious to water or oils. Water could conceivably be taken up in small amounts in fractures within the chert/flint--such a piece would not be ideal for use as a "flint". With heat, the small amount of bound water in the material could be released and I suppose keeping flints in water might have been thought to keep them from dessicating. I don't think it necessary for sound flints. Flint/chert occurs in various forms. The classic black nodules from the chalk beds in England are the best known--these nodules are generally clean solid silica with few 'flaws'. Bedded cherts are common world-wide and the midcontinent cherts of the USA are one source--I believe Rich Pierce uses them. These cherts are generally stratified rather than separate nodules [though nodular beds exist], extensive and in places interbedded with other rock types. These cherts beds are best called 'rocks' than minerals. They often contain more 'impurities', more fractures, and sometimes micropores. The crystallinity varies more so than the best English flints. Nonetheless they can supply fine material for flints [and were extensively used by natives for tools and points]. The Arkansas Novaculite is a form of bedded chert as is the Boone chert of southern Missouri....I personally don't soak flints.
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Just to dump some cold science onto the subject, flint is non-porous and non-permeable as Dan indicated. Soaking won't get you far. Beyond that, the rock would have to be reactive to water/kerosene in some way to effect a change in the rock properties. However, quartz (flint) is about the most stable, non-reactive mineral there is; I'm trying to think of something more reactive and I'm drawing a blank.
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I haven't engaged in any other hobby in my lifetime that has so many "hand-me-down" folk lore type sayings as the muzzloading hobby seems to have...soaking flints is just one of them...
;D
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Oiling flints is not "far fetched" and while I have no proof to point to as fact, I'd suspect that the purpose of "oiling" was to help prevent moisture/water from getting into the natural voids and breaking the flint from expansion likely associated with freezing temperatures. Water expands on solidifying and it is age-old practice in some areas to utilize water expansion to break rock, some places it was done in winter via freeze-expansion, in others it was done via vapor expansion with heat. Light oils would not offer much or long lasting protection as would be had from a heavier oil.
Oiling of precious stones is done to hide the defects, the purpose is primarily for cosmetics in trying to disguise the quality deficiencies.
As for oil soaking RR's, that's not far fetched either but like many other things, it has been corrupted by bad information. #1 oil (Kerosene) is worthless and a total waste of time as is the use of Turpentine, mineral spirits and other like solvents because they evaporate relatively quickly and thus provide no benefit whatsoever nor do drying oils or oils such as olive that readily oxidize. Light petroleum oils are short term only as they will easily migrate via gravity negating the beneficial effects, however, heavier petroleum oil, especially those with cling additives, are very beneficial but only when the wood is properly treated.
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They look shinier when wet, that's for sure.
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I get my flint wet all the time. Most often while cleaning my gun. It helps get the black stuff off.
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I do clean my flint when cleaning my rifle, using water,,, but I can't imagine using an oil based cleaner to clean or even store a flint in as it seems to me that if any remants of oil remained on the flint, the burned powder from the pan would cling to that flint like tar/mud...
Certainly if this practice was under taken - the oil would have to be removed I would sure think - before the flint was used?
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I'm soakin my powder in water tonight so it won't accidently fall outta the touch hole if i leave ole frizzie open ;D
Broke
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I was trying to think how this myth got started, and it occurred to me that it might just be a matter of appearance. People do soak gemstones to hide imperfections. Rock-lockers have been getting oil on flints (accidentally) for a few centuries. Maybe one of our predecessors saw the smooth-looking result and thought "Hey, all the imperfections went away! This is now a better flint!"* By chance that flint lasted a while, and a legend was born.
*or, perhaps, "Zounds! Ye oile hath takenne away ye imperfectiones! I vouchsafe that thisse flinte doth have greater vertue!"
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by the way, oiling gemstones is a type of fraud, not an acceptable practice. Unscrupulous dealers will also dye poor colored stones to make them look better. They will fuse a thin layer of gem over glass. They will color nongem species to look like gems [eg, turquoise]. Buyer beware--deal with respectable gem dealers or know your gems! Gemology is one of my hobbies--an outgrowth of a lifelong rockhound hobby and a geology career, I guess. The only gem that may be helped by immersion in water or oils is the opal--opal is a cousin of flint [maybe that is where the practice started?]. Opal is amorphous SiO2 and flint is cryptocrystalline SiO2 and common quartz is crystalline SiO2. But opal contains a little water and can dessicate. Opal rough is commonly stored in water.
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Mike R, Thanks. I had read in Revolutionary War accounts that the British flint was superior to the American flint. Now I understand why.
Back to the original question.
Guys this is really simple. See the structure of the molecule has some small spaces between the atoms that make up the bonding of what we see as solid form. So what happens is that if you soak the flint in water, eventually water will get in these little pores and when the flint trikes the frizzen it will steam off some of the water quickly and the very tip of the flint will explode. Just like a river rock set in a fire. This is a way to make a self sharpening flint.
Now, if you soak it in Kerosene. Well those same little spaces get filled with a flammable liquid so, you see, if you have a low quality flint that doesn't spark too well, this works like an added boost to the sparking as a little spark will set off the little trapped pockets of kerosene and they will make fire to compensate for the poor sparking characteristic of low quality flint.
;D ::) I missed my calling, I should have gone into pollytics.
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This calls for a test!
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This concept of "oiled gun flints" goes back at least to the 18th century! I have found them listed that way in colonial store records.
Gary
Happened across one of the period documents I mentioned in the above post.
This is from a 1765 inventory of a store in Virginia;
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Gun flints Oiled 2 doz. 3 ½ [d]
" " Common 750 6/ [per 1000] 4/6
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3 1/2 [d] is 3 1/2 pence. 6/ is six shillings per 1000 so 4/6 is 4 shillings 6 pence
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You guys are soaking them in the wrong stuff. Serious flint shooters (Like myself) soak
them in oil thats been drained from a car after you change oil. Now you know.
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You guys are soaking them in the wrong stuff. Serious flint shooters (Like myself) soak
them in oil thats been drained from a car after you change oil. Now you know.
Gasp! the Gov't classifies that stuff as toxic waste! ::)
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Maybe soaking them in nitro glycerin.....on second thought they wouldn't last long that way! :o
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Oiled flints slide off your frizzen faster and increase your lock speed!
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I have been soaking mine and then so my fingers don't smell of kerosene for weeks or paraffin for a fortnight. I pick them out of the jar with a magnet. ;)
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Flintriflesmith--any idea of what kind of oil was used for those old Virginia flints?
I am an old, somewhat cynical, engineer with more faith in experience than in laboratory science. Makes me wonder if those old Virginians paid more for oiled flints, might not they actually have worked better?
After all, we shoot these things primarily for fun, but a couple hundred years ago flintlocks were a more serious item.
Also wonder if maybe them there dumb old Indians, who depended upon flint stuff working so they could eat & retain their hair, might haved had actual experience favoring burying flints to "keep them fresh" Just because the explanation makes no obvious sense to 21st century America does not mean the action is of no value.
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Soaking flints for flintlocks is possibly akin to polishing gronicles on board a sailing vessel.
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What's a gronicle?
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I soak Ice chips in Bourbon, and that works for me. ;D Then I turn on Outlaw country on Sirius, crack open RCA or Kindig, and relax, and let you guys figure out why they soaked their flints. Don't get much better than that, except maybe shooting, or being at Dixon's
Bill
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I think it is a point of attachment for your sky hook. ;D
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Flintriflesmith--any idea of what kind of oil was used for those old Virginia flints?
I am an old, somewhat cynical, engineer with more faith in experience than in laboratory science. Makes me wonder if those old Virginians paid more for oiled flints, might not they actually have worked better?
After all, we shoot these things primarily for fun, but a couple hundred years ago flintlocks were a more serious item.
Also wonder if maybe them there dumb old Indians, who depended upon flint stuff working so they could eat & retain their hair, might haved had actual experience favoring burying flints to "keep them fresh" Just because the explanation makes no obvious sense to 21st century America does not mean the action is of no value.
folks in those days also bled each other to cure them...I am sure they found no 'secret' by oiling flints...
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Flintriflesmith--any idea of what kind of oil was used for those old Virginia flints?
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No idea what oil they were referring to but their choices did not include modern petroleum based oils like kerosene.
In inventories of the period "sweet oil" can refer to any eatable vegetable oil but usually meant olive oil. Whale oil was the most common animal oil but in America there was also a lot of bear oil being rendered. I don't know anything about fish oils.
Gary
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Gronicle discussion, if you really need one...
http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?7316-Seized-gronicle
Essentially a nonexistant element on a vessel, one that a newbie is sent in search of. Things like, "I'm all out of gronicle polish. Go see if the quartermaster will give us a fresh tin."
I can see greybeards baiting a fresh recruit with advice about soaking his flints. But with actual original source material...
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Gronicle discussion, if you really need one...
Aw shucks!!! You mean Taylor can't hang his sky hook from it??
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In my search for a Gronicle I looked thru some flintknapping sites.
From Joel/Calgary:
"... concerning both traditional British gunflint manufacture and modern experimental archaeology was that flint fresh-dug from underground (and still damp - saturated/hydrated/whatever) was easier to knap than that which was either surface-collected or dug but stockpiled & dried out. This has been attributed variously to saturation of microfractures and/or micropores and/or to hydration of any residual opaline material. The modern knappers reported that if the flint (nodules, spalls, or preforms) is stored in water after excavation, it continued to knap easier than if allowed to dry. Some may have reported that flint can be rehydrated/resaturated/whatever if soaked long enough, and this is sometimes suggested as a somewhat less effective alternative to heat-treating flint to improve the workability...this is hearsay...I am not a sufficiently skilled knapper to tell the difference, but I have a couple of pails of spalls soaking in the garage...One would not heat-treat flint intended for gunflints, as it would be more fragile. All of this would suggest that fully hydrated/etc. gunflints might actually be somewhat more fragile than dried ones"
This agrees with those Indians who buried their flint "to keep it fresh" So they could sharpen or do whatever to reshape the flint.
It also says that a flintlock shooter would prefer to keep his gunflint dry, rather than wet.
Still doesn't answer what oil might do to a flint. Other than to keep water away. By the way, kerosene can pick up water. I'd switch to an animal or vegetable oil.
Given the paucity of whale oil I might consider Track's Mink Oil, or just plain sweet/olive oil. Whether or not the flint actually sparks better, I will claim, with a serious mien, expertise backed by 18th Century practice!
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I purchased flints at Friendship in the 70s that were packaged in baby food jars full of ATF. Still using some of them today. Can't tell any difference between them and others recently purchased from TOW.
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I keep my spare bulk bags of Fuller black english fints stored on the south side of the filing cabinet to ensure they're neither too wet nor too dry.
(PS: I live north of the equator)