Flintlock vs. Percussion for Reliability

[Pukka Bundook]

Flint Or Detonator?

Col Peter Hawker, "Instructions to Young Sporstmen"

"While I was using nothing but detonating guns for four seasons, it was the remark of my man, that he had never had the pleasure of seeing me make such long shots as I was once in the habit of doing, and I, ready to lay all the fault on myself, or rather to a premature attack on that Anno Domini complaint which must befall the best of us, felt that I dare not blame a system which my superiors had so universally adopted.
I took up a flint gun.
This was worse and worse; as its comparative slowness made me miss even fair shots.
The next year, however, having being prevented by illness, from taking a gun in hand till just before the end of the season, the sensation of firing a flint and a detonator became as it were De novo.
I accordingly took out a Flint gun, and Down came the long shots, as in former days!-I name this as a simple fact.
Let others argue the point as they please.
So I shall now conclude the subject by reducing the matter to a very few words.

Can you shoot well with a flint gun?  Yes!.....Then leave well alone!
Can you? No!  Then by all means go and get a detonator."


In the chapter on the detonating system, he says this, re. a detonator firing quicker, but not Stronger;

"Mr. Durs Egg made to me a droll but good comparison, on the ignition of detonating guns;
he said "If I were to kick a fellow out of my shop, would he go off as strong on his legs as if I allowed him to walk out?"       :-)

[Lobo]

Flint be sharp to make good spark no damp be in the pan
pick the vent to clear the way to do the job at hand
plug the vent with feathered quill to keep the damp at bay
Do your part so carefully and the ball will find it's way

[Pukka Bundook]

Is that a fairly modern poem, Lobo?

I ask, as the term "vent' is used, and I always wonder why a touchhole is a vent these days....(apart from artillery, where a touchhole was Always a vent! LOL!)

[alacran]

I love both locks. I do use a caplock in the half stock Hawken style guns because I believe they never came with a flintlock.

Both are fun and both work well if you pay attention to keeping everything clean and dry.

I concur wholly with your post.
Love my Hawken and love my flintlocks. Don't consider one to be superior to the other.
Thanks to Mr. Pletcher we can assume that a caplock is faster than a flintlock.  I don't consider .20 seconds  to mean much though.

[jackley]

On opening day of pheasant season in S.E. Wyoming, I was hunting with my flintlock double in 14ga.. And as usual the wind always blows in southern Wyoming. But that day it was relentless, 20 to 25 mph steady and up to 40mph gusts.

I prime with the fff I load with, and no matter what I tried back to the wind, cupping my hand over the pan. It was really hard to keep powder in the pan.  The powder would blow out of the pan, before you could close the frizzen.  So a lot of misfires, and missed birds.  It was one time that I wished I had taken one of my percussion guns along.

And if you are wondering what I was doing out in that kind of wind storm. This is Wyoming if you don't hunt in the wind you don't hunt.



Jerry     

[OldMtnMan]

   I have to question the advice of Col Hawker. When I shoot a flintlock and a similar gun in caplock with the exact same load. The flint feels like a softer recoil. I assume it's because of pressure being lost out the touch-hole. I would assume this means less velocity on the ball too. I don't own a chrono to prove it though.

So, I don't see why the flint would be better for the long shot. Except, maybe a flint forces us to stay down on the shot longer. However, we can do the same with a caplock with practice and discipline.

[Pukka Bundook]

Pete,

Col. Hawker says percussion Recoils more than a flint with same load. ...but the flint (maybe due to lower pressure?) keeps the shot closer together, and therefore produced tighter patterns , so longer range could be achieved.
His book has lots of experiments with flint and percussion guns, even the same gun with different locks fitted.  Will look some pertinent info out as time permits.

I am quite confident he had it figured out.  :-)

[OldMtnMan]

Ok, that makes sense.

[Daryl]

Sounds as if Hawker was inebriated when writing that 'work'.imho

If flintlock guns were more accurate than cap locks, the Irish would never have developed their Rigby long range cap-lock rifles

but would have had fast English locks of flint persuasion.

As well, the incredibly accurate, heavy paper patched 40 rod rifles of the States would also have been flinters - IF flint ignition was the

 more accurate ignition source.

[rich pierce]

I think they are talking about birdshot patterns.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

I always like to compare the flintlock vs. caplock debate to driving an automatic vs. manual transmission.  Why are manual transmission more fun to drive?  I don't know, but for those who can master them well, they just are.  Perhaps that is it.  When you shoot a deer with a flintlock, there is more merit in that than shooting a deer with a caplock.   Are flintlocks as reliable as caplocks?  In the right hands they are.

I try to impress on my kids that the achievement in hunting is not necessarily the Boon-n-Crocket score, but how you have improved your skills to achieve the goal.  Some people line their walls with trophies by spending money.  Others by spending time in the woods.  The former is about like paying a jeweler to make a Superbowl ring for you.

You have to decide.  You decide how much challenge you want.  If you take on too much you can get discouraged.  I often tell people to get a small bore flintlock as their introduction to flintlocks.  It a whole lot easier to recover from a failure to fire when it was just a squirrel or bunny in your sights rather than a buck of a lifetime. 

[OldMtnMan]

This is kind of funny. earlier in the thread everyone was saying flintlocks are more reliable than caplocks.

Yet when hunting, the flintlock is more of a challenge. A bit of contradiction no?

Personally, I don't find one easier or harder than the other to hunt with. Compared to modern weapons they're both a challenge. I'm a still hunter and only take offhand shots. I don't do it for anyone else but me. I like to challenge myself. I find it rewarding. 

It's all good and not important to compare to others. Do what you like best and don't brag about it.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Well, I don't think I'd ever claim that flintlocks are inherently more reliable than caplocks.  However, a flintlock in the hands of a seasoned shooter may be more reliable than a caplock in the hands of a beginner.  It's the shooter, not the gun.  But that is precisely why the flintlock is more satisfying to a seasoned blackpowder shooter. 

The lockspeed on flintlock is a challenge with squirrels.  Their run-stop-run-stop mode of going about will drive you nuts.  So often the very last thing I see before the flash of the pan obscures my vision is the otherwise still squirrel lurching forward!

[OldMtnMan]

That's why I need larger targets. Elk is just right for my old worn out vision.

[Pukka Bundook]

Daryl,

As Rich P said above.

Neither myself or Hawker mentioned Accurate.
 Also, Hawker writing 1815 -22 & 32 editions, was putting pen to paper long before the Irish team were shooting.
Hawker was known as "The father of Game shooting."

Note, I didn't say Target shooting.   

I do think it a shame though, that someone like  Hawker, who went to great pains to test both systems so thoroughly and took the time to publish all his findings, can be written off as "Inebriated" by a bloke who hasn't read nary a word of his compositions. 

All the best,
Richard.

[OldMtnMan]

Considering when he wrote it. Caplocks are better now. Certainly, caps are.

Personally, as added insurance, I use musket caps on my caplocks.

[Lobo]

Many years ago when I was a young buck my rifle was a Leman plains rifle by Green River in .54cal. I carried that gun on an elk hunt in Montana. I packed up a mountain and camped just below timberline. It snowed some and I had a problem with the rifle not firing at the end of the day. Every day I had to remove the nipple and put a little powder in to get it to fire. Reload the next day and hope it would fire if I saw an elk.

Some years later I got a .32 flintlock. I killed a passel of squirrels and never had a problem. Then I got a big .62 and went on a moose hunt. It rained almost every day but as long as I kept the powder in the pan dry I had no problem. when the time came I shot and killed a big bull.

I never hunted with a percussion gun again. As long as my flint is sharp, my vent clear and my powder is dry my rifle WILL fire. I truly believe if you do your part a flintlock gun is more reliable than a percussion gun.

Me as a young greenhorn nearly 50 years ago with the Green river percussion rifle in front of an old trappers cabin I found in the mountains. I'm holding one of 3 martins I trapped while I was there

[Pukka Bundook]

Lobo,

I can relate to that.  my flint was last man standing on an occasion of trail -walks in thunder-storms.

Pete,

 Hawker said cap-locks are faster. he said more reliable for on the water.  He only had reservations about duck guns, (weighing 19 or 20 lbs)  as the flint in this case threw Tighter patterns, and did not recoil as savagely.  (He shows his patterns and penetration tests in the book)
He  was firing pretty stiff charges in these guns.

What I copied above was not saying one was better;
He was saying if you shoot a flint well, don't fix it!      If you Don't shoot it well, get a cap-lock!!  What can be wrong with that advice ?

[Mike from OK]

My flintlock has had more failures to fire than my caplock... No question about it.

But every time my flintlock has failed it was because there was a failure on my part... dull flint, fouling clogging the touch hole, etc... Problems that resulted from me, as the operator, to do my part.

Not so with my caplock. Failures are less frequent than with the flint... But often times those failures are due to circumstances beyond my control... Bad caps (thankfully rare) being one. And when a nipple and/or flash channel become blocked, it can be an ordeal to correct the issue.

Is a flintlock MORE reliable than a caplock? I don't think so.

Can a flintlock be AS reliable as a caplock? In my experience, Yes... If the shooter is diligent in the  preparation and attention to detail that a flintlock requires.

Mike

[alacran]

Many years ago when I was a young buck my rifle was a Leman plains rifle by Green River in .54cal. I carried that gun on an elk hunt in Montana. I packed up a mountain and camped just below timberline. It snowed some and I had a problem with the rifle not firing at the end of the day. Every day I had to remove the nipple and put a little powder in to get it to fire. Reload the next day and hope it would fire if I saw an elk.
Four years ago I was hunting cow elk. It was in the Arizona White Mountains. I was hunting with my .58 barreled Hawken. Hunted for 21 days.  Two days it snowed so much I never saw the sun. There was also sleet and hail during the hunt.  Could have shot at least five bulls as close as 8 yards.  Having an antlerless tag, that was out of the question. Long story short, kept gun in the truck every night. removed the cap and placed a wide piece of rubber band on the nipple with the hammer resting on it. I put on a fresh cap every morning. After 21 days the gun went off without any hesitation.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

I wonder. . .
For those who have had bad experiences with caplocks - how many of those instances involved pyrodex?

Pyrodex is notorious for failing to fire.  Since it is so difficult to ignite that it is considered unuseable in a flintlock you can safely bet most peoples' flintlock experiences are with real BP only.  When I got started, the only source of wisdom I had on muzzleloading was the guy in the store.  I used pyrodex. . .and had lots and lots of misfires.  Later I found a club that introduced me to BP, and I have never looked back.

[OldMtnMan]

I think sometimes caplock users get a little careless. They assume it's more reliable than it is. Also, a lot of them will use sub powders.

If a caplock fails to fire but does after you put a little powder in the nipple hole. What does that tell you? It tells me the powder was never there when you loaded it. It's important to keep the beech channel clean. It's important to load the powder and then tap the barrel while leaning it over in the direction of the nipple. It's important to get the powder to fill the channel and be under the nipple. Do all this and a caplock won't fail. Using a musket cap will help too.

It took me longer to get a flintlock firing reliably than a caplock. I've learned what each needs to fire every time. They both require dry powder where it needs to be and the ignition source whether pan powder or cap to fire every time. Do that and both work just fine.

[OldMtnMan]

I forgot to mention. If you're having a problem with a caplock and you're using 2F black powder. Try switching to 3F powder. Not only will it ignite easier, have less fouling, but it will flow into the breech channel easier too.

[Lobo]

Flint be sharp to make good spark no damp be in the pan
pick the vent to clear the way to do the job at hand
plug the vent with feathered quill to keep the damp at bay
Do your part so carefully and the ball will find it's way

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Thanks Lobo!

Poetry is something that is sorely lacking in internet reading.