Matchlock in slow motion

[Canute Rex]

A fellow competitor at the Smugglers Notch Primitive Biathlon took a 600 frame per second video of me shooting my matchlock. There is quite an impressive fireball from the priming.



Perhaps someone (Larry Pletcher?) could infer the ignition speed from the video timing.

You can see the butt of the gun compress my thick clothing as it kicks back. It's hard to get the firm buttstock/shoulder contact with a lever trigger because I can't get three fingers around the wrist. That's my excuse, anyway.

I remember someone embedding video in a post here, but I can't figure out how it was done. Can any computer savants out there help?

[Daryl]

That's cool.

[T*O*F]

Same event.  I can't believe how many safety rules this guy violates.  Maybe that's why his back is turned to the range officer.

[Larry Pletcher]

A fellow competitor at the Smugglers Notch Primitive Biathlon took a 600 frame per second video of me shooting my matchlock. There is quite an impressive fireball from the priming.



Perhaps someone (Larry Pletcher?) could infer the ignition speed from the video timing.
snipped. . . . .

I can make educated guesses when I have the video on my software.  Then, knowing the frame rate and playing back frame by frame you can get a reasonable idea.  In this case, I'd be just speculating, which I try not to do.

There are however a couple of observations I'd like to make.  You can see three separate unique events here.  The pan ignition is obvious.  The barrel ignition can be seen by the jet from the vent, and very quickly after is the muzzle flash.  Except that I'm used to seeing these events at 5000 frames/second, this looks much like I expect to see with a flintlock.  The missing part is the mechanical time.  In most flintlocks, from sear trip to pan ignition will fall in the .030 to .050 range. Here, I can't detect this mechanical part.  I would expect that from the time the match touches the priming to barrel ignition to be very similar though.

Regards,
Pletch

[Vomitus]

Nice hold.Very nice!

[Canute Rex]

Pletch: the lack of mechanical time is why matchlocks survived as target rifles into the early 18th century. No flinch. The match disappears behind the flashguard and...surprise! It goes off. At short ranges I shoot better with my match smoothie than with my flint rifle for just that reason. Some day I'll build an early 18th c matchlock rifle like my friend Steve's and improve my standings at the shoots.

Thanks, Leatherbelly, but that was one of my "can't hit a cathedral from the inside" days.

[doug]

    although I have never shot them, the matchlocks that I have, have quite a long distance to travel from at rest to in the pan.  I would expect them to be no faster than a flintlock and probably a lot slower relative to trigger pull / squeeze.   Hopefully this summer I will get one reamed out and shooting

cheers Doug

[Canute Rex]

Doug: Once you figure out the weird trigger pull you'll probably shoot better than with an equivalent flintlock.

I guess it is a question of how you define "fast." Imagine a flintlock with a lot of trigger creep, but no release and zero lock time. Nothing ever goes click and there's no hammer whipping forward or frizzen opening. There's the time between the ignition of the first powder grain in the pan and the first powder grain in the barrel, but that's it. That's why in the video I seem to have such a good hold. The ball is out the muzzle before I have time to react.

You have *multiple* matchlocks? Lucky man. I'm looking to get one a bit less clumsy and smaller bore than my present behemoth.

Have fun!