Spark Tester

[Burgess_rudy]

I made my first ever homemade Charcloth  last week after grilling. It turned out well. I have been having trouble again with my Brown Bess and broke the Frizzen Spring on it when I turned the mainspring vise too far. SNAP!! It turns out Pedersolli uses not very well made cast springs. I ordered a new one from Dixie Gun Works (Their Second Model Bess "Italian made" Frizzen spring fits and I think it is made by Pedersolli and costs a lot less). When it came by UPS I wanted to make sure that not only was I getting good spark but that the sparks were going into the pan. I cut a small piece of charcloth and put it in the flash pan. I tested the gun in the dark and the charcloth glowed bright in two areas where it caught the sparks. When I went  to take the charcloth out, it  almost burned my fingers and quickly put it in water as the cloth had burned pretty quickly and hot.  I guess this would be an alternative way of testing instead of using gunpowder. I can't say that 100% of the sparks went into the pan, but the charcloth shows it was enough to ignite it and I will assume black powder. Anybody else do this?

[t.caster]

With the Deluxe Siler on my Beck rifle I can put the charclothe on the floor and set it off from benchtop level!   Misfires are very rare!
Kudos (again) to Jim & Barbie!

[SCLoyalist]

Another way, if you have a digital camera with a self timer and that allows setting a long exposure (at least a couple of seconds), you can  trip the shutter and have enough time to trip the lock while the shutter is still open.   Putting the camera on a tripod helps, as does having the gun on some sort of rest, and the camera in closeup mode so the lock pretty well fills up the frame.  You get something like this:



The light can be pretty dim - that helps keep the exposure time long, and the sparks are self-illuminating.

[omark]

back "in the day", lighting char this way was quite common when building fires. recommend doing it with an unloaded firearm as many cabins, houses have a bullet hole near the fireplace.    mark

[smylee grouch]

Thats a good point omark-I know of at least one such char lighting demo that was almost fatal to a near by dog and quite embaresing to the trigger man.

[omark]

thats when ya shake your head and say"who the $#*! loaded my gun???"         mark