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Durrs Egg Lock

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How many of you have, or have had a Durrs Egg lock? What is your opinion of them? Good or bad, particular quirks?
I have one on my Fowler and am generally pleased with it, however, this is my first and only flintlock and have nothing to compare it to.
Thanks, Idaho PRB
 
i have a Durs Egg in my forty caliber, and a Chambers Large Siler in my .36... i like the siler a lot better... it's simpler, the sear feels cleaner, and i think it looks better. no matter how har i tried, i couldn't get the unset pull on the Durs Egg below ten pounds.

just one guy's opinion, and no doubt worth what you just paid for it.

make good smoke!
 
I have one on one of my Tennessee rifles and have had no problems with it. It's fast and a good sparker. Flint life is about average.
 
I have both a cap and flint versions of that lock, both are nice locks, I did disassemble them both and polished all the contact points with a fine Arkansas stone. but other than that they are both very fast and the flinter is a great sparker.

that said I don't have any thing to compare them with since my flint pistol also has an L&R lock on it
 
"I couldn't get the unset pull on the Durs Egg below ten pounds"
This is most likely because of trigger placement and not the lock.
 
I have one on my 48" barrel smoothbore. I built the gun over 20 years ago. It worked fine today at the range. Still all original parts. It is a very fast lock and very dependable in my opinion.

Many Klatch
 
Bob Gular said:
"I couldn't get the unset pull on the Durs Egg below ten pounds"
This is most likely because of trigger placement and not the lock.
I agree.
I've only owned one L&R Durs Egg locks but it always worked just fine. (I sold it along with the gun it was mounted on).

Except for many of the foreign made locks on foreign made factory guns I have yet to find a truly bad trigger pull that was caused by the lock.
 
while i will conceede that i'm not the best builder around, i did no small tinkering with the trigger, and still couldn't get it to let off at what i would consider anything close to a decent pull. since it's a set trigger, i don't plan to get too upset about it. i haven't tried to mount it to something out of the stock so i can put a guage on the lock itself, but just holding it in my hand, the Durs Egg letoff feels a good bit heavier than the Siler. just my two cents worth...

make good smoke
 
Built my first "scrath built" flintlock rifle in 1978 with the Durs Egg lock and it has been great, 3 pound pull, fast, waterproof. But the flint edge is centered in the path of the touchhole blast and gets mighty dirty.
 
I also have a Durs Egg lock. It is on my .45 cal. Penn. rifle. The lock is a good lock. The reason the trigger pull may be a little hard is because the main spring is very heavy. That is also why the flints may not last long because the flint hammer or (cock) falls so hard. I have had flints last for up to 80 shots and I had a new flint expload on the first shot. The old L&R locks did have a problem with the trigger sears braking. The parts were not hardend enough. I had gone through 3 sears so far. The last one has lasted the longest. Now about 5 years. I hunt with my Durs Egg lock and in all kind of weather. This last year I had fallen down in the snow twice and I covered the gun in the snow but it still fired after cleaning the snow off and cleaning the barrel out. The timing is very fast. I had my rifle timed with a percussion rifle and we could not see any difference in the firing timing. The locks are great. Enjoy. Dennis.
 
I wrote an article for MuzzleBlasts in January 1990 that timed L&R's Durs Egg and Manton locks. The locks were very similar in performance with the Durs Egg slightly faster. It differed from the Manton in one respect. It was faster and more consistent fired with the flint bevel down. The averages for 20 trials each were as follows:

Durs Egg:
bevel up: .0398 sec.
high/low variation: .0251 sec.

Durs Egg:
bevel down: .0358 sec.
high/low variation: .0114 sec.

The Manton was faster with the bevel up, but consistency generally the same either way.

You mentioned, "I had my rifle timed with a percussion rifle and we could not see any difference in the firing timing." Could you tell me more about this? A friend and I are working on a test fixture to measure this.

Regards,
Pletch
 
I have the manton lock and can tell you it is very fast and reliable I think I may have converted my buddy back to flint after using my rifle. He told me he never knew a flintlock could be so fast and accurate, he thought it was faster than his percussion. His last 2 flinters were CVA's so he was expecting the whoosh bang.
 
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