can a straight drilled touch hole be as fast as one with a liner ?

[carpcop]

I have 13/16 .45 caliber barrel , can a straight touch hole be as fast as a liner if done correctly ? I want to keep this rifle as authentic as possible. thanks

[Bill in Md]

Corrosion over the long haul is the issue you will face without a touch hole liner.....b

[smylee grouch]

I had a rifle that I had finished, 1" barrel-50 cal and didn't have a liner at the time so drilled a 1/16th hole and tried to shoot it while waiting for a liner. Real poor results with a hang/slow fire every shot. When the liner arrived shooting was fun again.

[Bob Roller]

Smiley Grouch summed it up in few and very understandable words.The old way is more like a fuse and the Brits with their liners and faster than lightning locks proved the worth of a liner.They were as fast as a caplock and some center fires.
Bob Roller

[petejc]

I built 4 rifles all from scratch.....not exactly scratch like the originals, but from plank of curly maple and siler locks and Getz swamped bbls.  My first was in 1987 and I did not put a liner in that one....I'm 79 now and I can't remember what size drill I used.  I think it was a little bigger than a sixteenth...I kinda remember .093 dia.....anyway I shot this gun pretty much since 87 and killed at least 6 or 7 deer with it.  Shot in a few local matches and I have NEVER had a shot that didn't go off.  It is as quick if not quicker than my liner ones......well one of the 4 I built was a percussion but that don't count......All my rifles were .54 cal....I just like that caliber......One thing I will say is before I installed the breech plug, I did take a dremel with a ball grinder and made a concave grind on the inside of the hole...Wasn't a lot but maybe that helped....

[axelp]

For a few years I shot a longrifle with no liner just a drilled vent. It had decent ignition, but I seem to recall it was a bit more finicky than my guns with vent liners-- but that may have been a difference in locks too

[bluenoser]

I think an unlined touch hole can be as fast as a liner if the hole is internally coned.  My first build was back in the early 1980s - a full stock Hawken flint with a hooked breech.  I also wanted to keep it as PC as possible, so didn't use a liner and the ignition tended to be slow, but fairly consistent.  I internally coned it couple of years ago, which made a big difference.  The speed now is probably about the same as that of my flinters with coned liners. Consistency is better too.

[Scota4570]

My experience with a drilled touch hole was terrible.  The reliability was nonexistent.  I was apparently doing it wrong.  Adding a liner fixed it.  I have no use for guns that do not fire reliably. 

 Why not use a carbon steel liner and finish it the same as the barrel? 

[jrb]

https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=9365.0

[Clark Badgett]

Smiley Grouch summed it up in few and very understandable words.The old way is more like a fuse and the Brits with their lines and faster that lightning locks proved the worth of a liner.They were as fast as a caplock and some center fires.
Bob Roller

Musket touch holes were usually 1/8”+ in diameter. Combat reliability was more important than a little higher velocity.

[bob in the woods]

None of my current rifles or smoothbores have vent liners. My standard vent drill size is 5/64th   The guns are fast and reliable. The issue as mentioned will be having the vent enlarged through use to where it becomes necessary to install a liner. I did that on my old target rifle which ultimately had somewhere between 12 to 15 thousand rounds through it before I sold it to a friend . A lot depends on your loads.
My bullet rifle fired a 535 gr PP bullet with 80 to 90 gr of powder [ depending on which powder brand]  I had to replace the vent liner on that rifle every 40 to 50 rounds or else I would have noticeable  elevation variations at distances past 400 plus yards. At 1000 yards, I had rounds hitting the dirt in front of the target, but after a liner change I was back on paper.  I was never able to obtain a platinum liner which I'm told would have helped. Best I had were the beryllium copper screw in liners . With round balls and non magnum loads, I don't think you'll have to worry about your vent for a long time.

[Goo]

Vent holes need to be placed right close to the breech plug seat. So close in fact that you need to notch the face of the breech plug. If the hole is drilled forward of the face of the breech plug it will be slower ignition.  Like others have pointed out. It is the hollowed feature on inside of the touch hole liner that makes it more reliable.  A regular touch hole can can be coned out a bit with a ball burr.  This gets the powder charge a little bit closer to the flash pan.  I have also coned the hole on the outside of the barrel this works just as well.   I think installing a touch hole liner should wait until after your touch hole gets rusted out.

[carpcop]

Thanks very much for the info. guys. This rifle is a gift and will probably not get shot enough to ever need a liner, but I have one if it does.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

GOO:  if your vent hole gets rusted out, you have more issues than ignition.  The vents on my rifles suffer from gas cutting erosion, not corrosion, but there is never a speck of rust anywhere on them.

[Frank]

All of the flintlocks I own now have liners. I have had two flintlocks that did not have vent liners, a Numrich Arms Minuteman back in the 70s and a Tennessee Rifle I built with a Getz 40 caliber 7/8 diameter barrel and a large Siler lock. All of them were very reliable. As I recall I drilled out the touch hole on the unlined barrels to .070.

[kutter]

I used a few liners way back when.
Then I just started drilling the vent and using it as-is.
They seem to work just fine the old way especially if you take a bit of time to load them carefully. Like a 'pick' in the flash hole when loading and such.
Sometimes the vent is drilled a touch larger than what the experts say to do.

It'll take more than what's left of my lifetime to shoot one out by erosion.
If it does, then I'll fix it.

I think some of the Flint guns are slow and unreliable due to their extremely thick walled breech and long vent hole. Often filled with powder during loading & acting more like a fuse.

A large bore and/or thinner wall breech will leave a shorter vent travel. The powder will be closer to the pan,,just like a Vent Liner brings it there.

[Goo]

GOO:  if your vent hole gets rusted out, you have more issues than ignition.  The vents on my rifles suffer from gas cutting erosion, not corrosion, but there is never a speck of rust anywhere on them.

Thanks for the detailed correction of word choice.

[Bob Roller]

If a vent liner is not wanted the the tiny drilled hole can be externally tapered with a 6/0 taper pin reamer and when the lock is primed the taper can be a small funnel and rapid ignition achieved.Burn out over a long period of shooting can be a later problem but rust will be from neglect.
Bob Roller

[Jim Kibler]

This has all been studied in detail by Larry Pletcher and his computerized timing device.  If I recall, there wasn't a whole lot of difference between a clean liner and a straight drilled touch hole (I think the liner was maybe 10% faster, but can't remember exactly).  The key finding is that a liner stayed much cleaner with subsequent shots as compared to a straight hole.  This is where more substantial differences were noted. 

[Daryl]

A longer 'channel' is what results from a non-chamfered drilled hole over a liner that automatically has a thin wall between the pan and the powder charge
inside the bore.  Thus, the longer channel would be more susceptible to being plugged with fouling. "Pricking" the vent would be perhaps, a necessary part
of shooting the drilled vent. As well, the drilled vent hole would have to be larger in diameter than the vent hole in a liner.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I read somewhere sometime that in the day, a hunter would insert the quill of a blue jay feather into his vent BEFORE he loaded his rifle.  Then, having loaded, he removed the feather, placed it into it's receptacle hole in the toe/bottom of his rifle butt, and primed his pan.  The quill effectively cleaned fouling out of the vent channel, and made a clear path to the charge for the fire of the prime.

[Acer Saccharum]

I had a heavy wall (5/16"wall) barrel with a straight vent hole. I got one fast ignition shot, and the subsequent shots were hangfires or complete duds. I lined the touchhole.

A thin wall barrel may fire just fine.

[AZshot]

My Don Bruton SMR has just a vent hole, but he said he coned the inside.  I've never had trouble with ignition, and some old timers at the range say "you have a fast lock time..." when I shoot.  Once in a while I have a flash in the pan, but it's usually when I have an old flint and didn't pick the vent hole.  It's a .45 Cal Colerain barrel, and a Late Ketland lock. 

[MuskratMike]

Like AZ of all my Don Bruton guns my primary hunting rifle the .54 has no liner but is internally coned. It also has a Colerain barrel with a Chambers Dale Johnson lock. I have found no difference in ignition times, and virtually no flash in the pans. Properly located vent hole with a well tuned and made lock is the answer.

[Tim Ault]

My 13/16 45 cal has a drilled vent that I coned internally and is very quick and never any issues with it. I drilled the hole at .075”