Advice Wanted - Flintlock Handguns

[AussieTH]

I could appreciate a bit of advice please.

My gun collecting is going well and I am looking a bit further afield – particularly towards flintlock handguns for both collecting and shooting.

Could anyone recommend good sources of information on looking after these weapons, caring for them, safety, operating them and what would be good areas to look at for collecting with an eye on investment?

PS I am still after Walkers, Dragoons and anything else interesting in the C & B area – condition not terribly important.

Thanks

Tony

 

[mykeal]

Probably the most important thing to remember is to not overload them. Flintlock handgun stocks tend to be thin on material in the wrist area, and overloading can crack them.

 

[Mike OTDP]

Contact the muzzle-loading community of the SSAA. Competitors in the MLAIC disciplines have this knowledge.

Now, as to flintlock pistols...I'm going to assume that you are using a high-end gun with a patent breech - a flint dueller. In repros, the Hege-Manton is the best, the Pedersoli LePage next. Or go with a custom gun.

To load, use a patched round ball. Some shooters use a wad. Loads tend to run around 30 grains of 3Fg. Prime with Swiss Null B.

Managing the flint is tricky. Bring a small hammer, knap the egde sharp when it dulls. Have spare flints, they are consumables.

To clean, remove the barrel and lock. Clean the lock with a brush. Scrub the barrel out.

 

[higene]

Flintlock Pistols

Flintlock pistols address the beauty and the beast. Antique flintlocks are expensive and easy to get ripped off on. There are several experts on this sight who can get you started in the right direction with them. Be very careful with antiques in every way.

I got a Lyman flint rifle for a song and am very pleased with it. It is reliable, accurate, and powerful, when I do my part. I got a Pedersoli Kentucky .54 for a mate to my Lyman. It is beautiful, pretty reliable, and accurate (not made to be real powerful).

When I was starting in flintlocks I went back to percussion to hone my skills. When percussion shooting gets boring - goes off every time, hits where you want, tried different loads - smaller, larger, different balls, conicals, shot -
then I am ready to do flintlock pistols.

I have the same love hate relationship I see other people having with golf. I get three in a row in the black at 50 yards - I'm in heaven. I can only get it to go off 3 times out of dropping the hammer 10 times I'm ready to throw the damn thing in the creek.

For the beauty of reproduction flintlocks I would check

Cherry's
Sitting Fox and
Pedersoli
sites online.

For the beast

http://www.huntingpa.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1184968&fpart=2


Good Luck and take care

Flintlocks are a dangerous love


Higene

 

[[email protected]]

This is my modern custom made Flintlock. .32 cal, Bomar sights, false muzzel.
This is for compention at Friendship. Yes, it will go off 10 times in a row. Will
out shoot most rifles at 50 yds.

 

[arcticap]

There's a forum that a lot of builder's frequent: http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php

Some of them are very highly skilled and well known. They build guns and sell them through consignment places like Track of the Wolf and their own websites, trade shows, word of mouth etc...
Many of them study different styles of guns and try to duplicate them to the best of their ability for period correctness. And then there's the Dixon's Gunmaker's Fair in Pennsylvania once a year where many enter their nicest pieces in competition for "Best in Show" to help bolster their reputations.

http://dixonmuzzleloading.com/index.php

Of course there are other very large gun shows and auction houses that are sources of guns to buy, sell, study, restore and duplicate.
And there's builders who are recognized for their ability to build brand new guns that actually look aged as if they were authentic antiques. Because of the long waiting period to buy guns from some builders, when one becomes available on the market they're often scoffed up because they generally don't lose their value and there's such limited production.

http://www.trackofthewolf.com/(S(2ft1fi55akvrkof5crwbd255))/categories/catList.aspx?catID=12#81

I think that some of the more ornate guns with carvings and inlays are investment grade. Some of the nicest ornate set of pistols that I can recall ever seeing pictures of were believed to be from true old world craftsman in the Baltic Sea area. The owner wasn't even sure exactly where they were from because of their rarity and lack of much documentation from that part of the world.

The builder/master engraver that I posted about below is an americanlongrifles site member that was getting ready to retire, and builders like him have a lifetime of experience and knowledge.

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=446376&highlight=jerry

 

[4v50 Gary]

If you're talking about caring for an antique flintlock, you don't shoot them. You clean them once, apply Rennaisance Wax to protect the wood and metal and you store it in a environmentally stable environment.

Replicas are for shooting.

 

[kentucky bucky]

Cheaper flintlock guns have turned off countless shooters because flintlocks are alot harder to make right in a cheap firearm. For instance, you might buy an old CVA flinter that goes boom every time, or it could be so tempermental that it sucks all of the joy out of shooting it. The second senario is the most likely to happen unless much tweaking has been done. If you want to shoot flint, try to get as much information about the setup, and "care & feeding" of flintlock mechanisms. It's relatively easy to make a caplock go boom , but flinters need certain things to be right and to work together to go boom every time.

 

[bonza]

Go with what Mike OTDP said. I shoot a Pedersoli 'Mortimer' .44 caliber smoothbore flintlock pistol. I've found mine shoots best with a bare ball seated over a damp felt wad & 30gns of Goex 3Fg. The balls are .433" that have been knurled by rolling them between two mill-bastard files, this increases the diameter by about .005" which makes them a thumb-pressure fit at the muzzle. The pistol shoots this combination very well, when I do my part. I've found that my Mortimer has an excellent lock that gives a good shower of sparks with almost any flint-type & I get good flint life too.