Back in May of this year I posted pictures of a Dutch/German flint horse pistol I had just finished except for the lock engraving. (Topic link here:
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=30969.0 ) I held off on the lock until I went to the NMLRA Gunmakers Seminar in Bowling Green, Ky., and took the engraving course taught by Jim Kibler to kick up my skills a notch. A very useful and fun course--thanks again, Jim! Anyway, I just now finished the lock engraving, and as promised, here are a couple of pics:
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Not as perfect a job as I would have liked, but better than a bald plain lock, and anyway I'm not the King's Royal Engraver.
Another problem I had with this pistol was that, upon final assembly, I found the ramrod hole going dead square right through the middle of the front lock bolt hole. It collided so perfectly, there was no way to notch the lock bolt, or otherwise fudge the course of either hole. At first, I decided to anchor the lock with a single rear bolt, and place a fake lock bolt (cut short, tapered, and filed as a wood screw) into the front lock bolt hole, plugged with a dowel. Not a great fix. With the single lock bolt tightened, the nose of the lock tended to rise up out of the lock mortise.
The solution I came up with was taken from later British work I have seen (not sure if this would be correct for early Dutch in the 1720's, but hey, it worked!) I took a 10 x 32 plain lock bolt with a big non-domed cylinder shaped head, threaded the shaft all the way to the head, and ran this from the inside of the lock through the existing tapped lock hole until the head was tight against the inside of the lockplate. The excess bolt on the outer surface was cut off flush with the lock plate, then the bolt head was filed down to make a locking lug extending forward from the original front bolt hole, as shown in the photo. A short flathead screw was placed in the very front of the lock inlet and countersunk until flush with the inlet, and the lock inlet notched next to the screw to receive the lug on the lock plate. The lock can now be dropped into the inlet, the front lug hooked into the retaining screw, and the rear lock bolt tightened normally. The result was a rock tight fit on the first try! The lock nose no longer rides up out of the inlet, and nothing shows from the outside.
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Jeez, these hypermagnified photos make my inletting look like $#*!!
You can see the ramrod at the bottom of the original lock bolt hole directly in harm's way.
Here is the left side of the pistol, showing the fake forward lock bolt, now actually a screw.
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So anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hope this little fix may help others!
Gregg
