Self Priming

[colt]

I was reading on another site about some guns that self prime when you pour powder down the barrel.  ???I have heard about older guns built having much larger touch holes than todays.What size do you guys use for a touch hole?I was wanting any feed back  about touch hole size and this self priming.
Thank you,
Ken

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

When I start to get charge powder coming into the pan, I replace my vent.  I like a vent no smaller than 1/16" or .0625" and no larger than .070 - a #50 drill bit.

[Captchee]

 A self priming lock isn’t just a large vent hole .
 The have a ?? lets say gate on the bottom , vent side of the frizzen  lid . When the  lock is fired this gate wipes the powder away from the flash hole as the frizzen opens  .

As I recall both Manton and Nock , just to name a couple , used these   type of  locks . 
 Draw back , the  lock must be cocked or at least at the half cock  when loaded .
 Something not to acceptable today . AS the lock can fire even just coming off the ½ cock
 But they did a lot of things that we don’t today . If you look at the British loading  drill.
 You will notice that it instructs to bring the lock back to full cock , prime the pan and then load the rest of the charge in the barrel and  run the ball home .
 So what is happening is you are running  a ball  onto the main charge  while the lock is at full cock and with a primed pan .

 I cant help but wonder  with so many having issues with blowing down the barrel ,,, I cant help but think a self priming lock would be greatly frowned upon .

 Now that doesn’t mean you cant do it . Just be careful

[colt]

Thanks guys. I use a 1/16 vent but had heard of people oversizing the vent so the pan fills when loading the barrel (with the frizzen closed) and saves on having to prime the pan.The claim was older (18th century) guns had larger vents than today. Ive never been fortunate to observe an original up close. do you think theres anything to this?
thanks,
Ken

[Acer Saccharum]

First of all, loading with the frizzen closed is a real safety issue. It is not allowed at any gun club.

Should the gun slip off half cock, there is a good chance the gun would fire. Good way to lose a hand.

Tom

[SCLoyalist]

I've read that British Regulars in North America would enlarge the touchholes of their Brown Besses so that the gun would 'self-prime', eliminating the priming step for faster loading.  Probably requires enlarging the touchhole on a trial and error basis until you get sufficient leakage into the pan.

I've no doubt it can be made to work, and maybe it made sense in a military, life-or-death situation.  For modern times, it raises safety and legal issues in competition and hunting.   

I would look on self-priming as a condtion that needed to be fixed, not something to try to attain.

SCL

[northmn]

Depending on the powder used I get some powder dribbling into the touch hole when loading with a .070 touch hole and 3f.  I have heard about self priming tricks from different sources, where American rifle shooters would also have larger touch holes to self prime for speed loading.  It has no real application in todays ML usage but may have been a historical use.  To load a paper cartridge in the military they would prime before charging.  Today we would prime last.  When I get the self priming effect in my flintlocks using larger touchholes I stick in a vent pick before loading .  Once the ball gets seated the powder compressses enough not to self prime.  It also seems to keep the vent clear.

DP

[Captchee]

First of all, loading with the frizzen closed is a real safety issue. It is not allowed at any gun club.

Should the gun slip off half cock, there is a good chance the gun would fire. Good way to lose a hand.

Tom

Absolutely.

 Lets also not forget that a flintlock can fire the man charge WITHOUT, a primed pan  .
 As such IMO loading with the lock cockled  even to ½ . While the frizzen is closed , is never a good idea

Thanks guys. I use a 1/16 vent but had heard of people oversizing the vent so the pan fills when loading the barrel (with the frizzen closed) and saves on having to prime the pan.The claim was older (18th century) guns had larger vents than today. Ive never been fortunate to observe an original up close. do you think theres anything to this?
thanks,
Ken

  It pretty hard  to document liners in early  American  rifles .
  But at the same time , there are examples of liners being used on European  firearms
 While many surviving American examples do have larger flash holes .
 IMO this was most likely from gas cutting of the softer barrels .
 See  the flash hole is not just a hole drilled in the barrel .
 If the flash hole is don’t correctly .  The hole is drilled . Then a cherry is used to concave the barrel wall on the inside of the barrel .  What this does is move  the main charge closer to the   pan charge .
 But what it also does is  bake for a thinner wall  around the flash hole .
 As this thin section erodes.  Not only does the flash hole enlarge , thus letting powder fall to the pan .
 BUT also what happens is  you  start to reduce  bore pressures  as the larger hole also vents more .
   In return  the vent starts to wear even more form the high pressure  coming out .

 The invention of the liner was to   provide the thinnest possible wall . “ bring the main charge as close as possible to the pan . While at the same time  providing the ability to  use a material that was less subject to the  cutting pressures

 Again IMO these larger holes  most likely are not done to prime the pan but a result of  use  .
   
I would also agree that  if your flash hole is so large that it primes the pan  “on a lock not designed to be self priming “ , it needs to be fixed .

[Herb]

As northmn says, some 3F will self prime (leak out the flash hole).  Swiss is finer grained and will self prime in some of my rifles, probably with .070 flash holes or larger.  As he also said, put a vent pick (or small plug- such as the quill of a small feather) in the hole before loading.  This is highly desireable in that when the ball is seated and the powder compacted, drawing the quill out of the hole leaves a cavity in the charge with more surface area to ignite.  If one has a flash in the pan, what we do is pick the vent.  I think what happens here is that a grain of powder blocks the hole and the flash doesn't ignite the powder.  You would not think that possible, that the flash flame could hit the side of a kernel of powder and not ignite it, but it happens so much there is no doubt about it. When you pick the vent, you push that blocking kernel aside and expose powder edges to ignite.  I had to plug the vent (with a feather) to keep the Swiss 3F from leaking out.  I would never close the frizzen to capture that leakage and self prime the pan.

[FALout]

If it's self priming, not only is it a danger for modern shooting at a range with other people, but I sure don't want to stand next to that individual when shooting.

[Long John]

The old British Manual of Arms instucted the soldier to open the cartridge with thier teeth and pour sufficient powder into the pan to fill it and then close the frizzen.  The remainder of the powder was then poured down the barrel followed by the ball and lastly the paper cartridge was rammed down to keep the ball from rolling out.  Then the gun was cocked, presented and fired.  This procedure requires that the soldier was loading a 1/2-cocked and primed gun!  It made sense when there were 4000 French soldiers shooting at you as fast as they could and your only hope of geting out of there alaive was killing them before they killed you.  This method of loading has no place in modern America! 

As other have said, you should only load with frizzen forward and hamer (cock) down.  I could tell you what I really think of the intellect of the person who suggested the use of a "self-priming" but Acer would kick me off the list.

Best Regards,

JMC

[Dphariss]

When I start to get charge powder coming into the pan, I replace my vent.  I like a vent no smaller than 1/16" or .0625" and no larger than .070 - a #50 drill bit.

Like Taylor said.

Dan

[Daryl]

Long John - that was the standard military loading practise for all countries which used paper ctgs.

[Captchee]

john , i believe you will find the gun  is already cocked .

 did the Bess have a 1/2 cock ?
 maybe all these years i have been under the assumption that it did not have a half cock notch ,  and that  the ½ cock is a modern , well relatively modern application

[Captchee]

 yepp after looking it up , yep i have been mistaken . thank you for the correction 

[Daryl]

Half bent and full bent - all flint military locks I've seen which isn't many, including 2 Besses but 100% had half bent positions.

[colt]

Thanks for all the good info...I dont think i said it was a goal to self prime (didnt mean to if it sounded that way)My question was did it happen with the old guns and was it because they intentionally made larger vents or did they just plain wear out. I think the safety issue is as plain as day and didnt think it needed stating.
Ken

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Well there's the obvious advantage of speed loading with self-priming touch holes.  But I can't think of any way that such an enlarged touch hole wouldn't result in poor accuracy.  The excess venting will result in eratic pressures. 

So, unless the need for speed loading outweighed the need for accuracy I doubt this was ever an intentional modification.

As for the safety concerns - that is true.  Just load a flintlock with everything except the prime.  Then try firing it with just the main charge and the frizzen sparks.  I suspect that most of us will get the gun to fire within a dozen tries.  Keep the frizzen open.

[Stophel]

The Prussians made their muskets to purposely self-prime.  The breechface was sort of coned to funnel powder into and through the hole.  I have a diagram somewhere...

Supposedly, they would close the frizzen, tear open the cartridge, pour in the powder, tap the butt on the ground a few times, and the pan was primed.  They were supposed to be able to fire faster than anyone else.

[colt]

stophel could you find the pic`s? i am curious
Best,
Ken