Opinions on Rifle Shoppe wheel locks?

I am new to anything pre flint lock and that much experienced even with flinters. I would like to try a earlier type gun. I like the looks and design of the wheellock guns. I read another very recent post here and followed up with a call to Loyalist. They dont have any. No surprise, it is not the first time I got all hot and bothered over an Indian gun. The Loyalist price to my door about $800 for a pistol. The Rifle Shoppe offers kits with fully functional locks. Or a lock as raw parts. I do not want the lock as parts. They claim the locks are authentic and all tuned up and ready to install. The stock is inletted. The lock needs to be cosmetic finished, with filing and sanding on the out side. No internal work. These kits are pushing $1100 to my door, and I still have to pay up for the key. That is a lot for me to swing or rationalize.

Please share any opinions or experience with the Rifle Shoppe in general and if possible the wheel locks. I am not sure what even to be asking.

Good news and bad news. The good: the kit is available and can ship in a matter of weeks. The bad news, is Rifle Shoppe no longer offers finished locks.

Hmmm .... this is not going to be easy.

GOOD - I have their Tannenberg hand gonne and love it! I always check to make sure things are in stock before ordering and always get my orders within a week or so.

NOT SO GOOD - I had CLA Member/artisan/gunsmith/blacksmith Brian Anderson of VT make a TRS early Germanic wheellock kit for me. Brian specializes in the early arms and he found about half the parts totally unusable, including the mainspring.

REALLY GOOD! - Brian is now making his own line of wheellock locks! They are amazing! PM me and I will send you his contact information.

Thank you flint62. I found a contact for Brian and left a message. I will ask what he can do for a drop in replacement. I suspect this is a lot of labor. It is crazy complicated.

I also found a very lenghty and detailed tutorial on building a wheellock pistol on you tube. It is quite intimidating. Any one piece is a project in itself. Then heat treating. And what ever else, I only watched a small fraction of the video series. I would say even if there are issues with a casting or spring stock, the you tube guy is building from scratch. It is amazing, taking stock steel and grinding and filing. His idea of machinist operation is to drill and tap a hole. Think about it, circa 1650, these were scratch built without power tools.

Here is a breakdown of the parts cost from Rifle Shoppe. The assembled lock, when it was available (no longer) $700. A kit with that lock assembled was $1100. A kit with lock as parts, $500 and change. The lock parts alone, $170. So; the lock parts is not much in the over all picture. And all those pieces can be scratch made. Or individual lock pieces if messed up are mostly $10 or $20 to replace. Rifle Shoppe will do the heat treat.

My gut tells me a complete gun from India would be the best start. Unfortunately, those seem to be more website eye candy than anything you can actually purchase.

If a wheellock is not made just right it is a paperweight or wall hanger if in a gun. If you want to save yourself much heartache in the future have bolek do one. I believe his prices are 2k and up, although it may be more expensive getting an India piece to work right! Wheellocks are expensive and very cool (Im working on 2 myself) and without a doubt you get what you pay for.

fourbore said:

My gut tells me a complete gun from India would be the best start. Unfortunately, those seem to be more website eye candy than anything you can actually purchase.

Click to expand...

FYI, forget the ones from India, Leonard Day has been trying that and cannot get them to work reliably ...

Consider the Indian wheellocks to be prematurely assembled parts sets. A friend of mine has made one work, but it involved a complete rebuild. Weak springs, bad geometry, newly fabricated parts. It's a crapshoot.

Brian Anderson is a master at this stuff, but don't take Flint62smoothie's statement as if Brian is churning them out like a factory. Each one is an individual work of art. Expect to wait and pay. It's the iron triangle of craftsmanship; fast, cheap, and good, pick two out of three. And forget about cheap/good.

As far as price goes, by chance I got my hands on a nice Bolek-made Italian-style wheellock lock for $1200, and I felt like I had robbed a bank or won the lottery. Even though it was a Bolek lock it still needed a tweak or two to get it working just right.

I got a wheellock pistol from Loyalist Arms a few months ago, expecting some work, and was pleasantly surprised.

It's not remotely as nice as the real thing, but it works - with some issues.
The main spring is so strong that despite the considerable friction in rotating the wheel, it will sometimes spin the wheel right around 180 degrees so that the sear drops into the hole in the back of the wheel again and you have to pull the trigger in order to span it.
The fit of the wheel into the bottom of the pan is not great, but coarser primer fixes that.
There are a couple of other things that could have been done better, but yes, it's functioning wheellock.
The most annoying thing for me was that they didn't de-burr the belt hook completely so I got stuck by a needle-sharp bit of steel when I first handled it.
The design is authentic except that they used a modern hardened bearing ball for the tip of the sear.

- Bill

Since we are on the subject- does anyone have measured drawings of a matchlock mechanism? I want to build one, but don't really have anything to examine or measure off of.

Toadboy,

The Rifle Shoppe can sell you a drawing and the lock plate. That is not much money.

Flint62, WRussel and Canute Rex,

I would consider the Loyalist gun as a kit. Any more would be a very welcome surprise. If some one cannot get one to work, then that same person would be in hopelessly deep with a raw kit.

Commodore,

I appreciate what you are saying. I would expect to spend a year building a kit. Or spend a year remaking ALL critical parts with a Loyalits. I dont have a 2k PLUS budget. I understand that often when answering a post you have to be aware other people will read this for years in the future. So, 2-3K advise maybe good for those readers and the custom builders. That does not work for me. Sadly, I have to put the whole idea on hold for a couple months while I work the finances to maybe get a $500 start. That could be a blessing as this is more of an lost art than I expected.

I started out broke (still am in fact) but having a champagne taste on a beer budget my solution was to learn and just keep building gaining knowledge everywhere I could. This is why a wheellock is something special

Waffenarten-Konstruktionen

Here are some wheellock and matchlock drawings

C Joscelyn said:

Waffenarten-Konstruktionen

Here are some wheellock and matchlock drawings

Click to expand...

Thank you so much!