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Touch Hole Liner Use

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smoothy

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Just how common were touch hole liners? How traditional are they? They appear common on contemporary flintlocks, but I've not seen many photos of originals with liners. I can see the advantage of them, getting the priming powder closer to the main charge. Were they in use on military arms? I built two flintlocks, but didn't install liners mainly because of the extra work and didn't want to mess anything up installing something that was not a "gotta have". I know the lock time is slower and I set my priming up more as a fuse than hoping sparks jump through long 1/16" hole. I'm accustomed to the long lock time and do use my flinters for hunting with no negative results.
 
Kit Ravenshear (armorer at the Tower of London at one point) told me they were a repair item. He never installed one in a new flintlock.

Though there are plently of examples on fine (and lightly used) flintlocks, some in platinum, to say there were installed originally on some highly embellished grades.
 
Just a question to you so i can gain some information on F/L, what is a touch hole liner?
I thought there was a small hole in the side of the bore next to the pan, a little information would help me out. :thumbsup: . boomm.
 
They were uncommon to the point of being virtually non-existant. On American guns anyway. A gold or platinum liner ("bushing") can be found on some big money European guns, but generally not on the more ordinary ones.

A touch hole would normally be a simple hole, sometimes coned on the inside. When a hole shot out and got too big, it was drilled out and a bushing (iron) put in place and a new touch hole drilled. :wink:
 
A touch hole liner is a stainless steel or bronze bushing that you screw in the barrel in place of drilling a vent hole. It will have a cone or counterbore of some kind inside. Some will retain a screw slot for the dubious advantage of taking it out to clean.
 
Anyone able to post anything that shows they were being used prior to 1810? Earliest gun I owned with a plug or liner was from the early to mid 1820's.
 
Boomm - What Stophel said. Plus, on some contemporary arms the touch hole liner can be screwed out and a drum put in with a nipple to convert it to percussion. Have to change the lock also. And its reversible. I'm not sure if this is done much anymore, pretty certain that it wasn't in the day.
There is a distinct advantage to having a touch hole liner as it generally gives faster and more reliable ignition. I was just trying to find out if it was actually common. As the above replies have atested to so far, they were not.
So..........if it wasn't common, does using a stainless steel touch hole liner deter from our traditional firearm? To me it appears that it is more of a modern convenience for reliability at the range and on the hunt.
 
Thanks to you all, bye time i get my first F/L i
will be knowlegable, so i know what to do. :thumbsup: . Boomm.
 
Hmmmmmm,

Just a point of order. I've not noticed any difference in time on a coned touch hole vs. a liner. Before folks get off half-cocked on this...there is not difference in a properly built gun.

They ignite the same. I have both, cannot tell the difference in them,....if I do my part.
 
What do you mean by properly built, in the traditional way? With a coned touch hole? How common was this versus a straight through hole? I'm just trying to understand what the common traditional method was, properly built or not. I've never shot a flintlock with a coned touch hole or a liner.
 
From Danny Caywood on his website....talking about his barrels and outside coned touch holes.

"One more, and an important reason, to use high carbon steel is that it erodes so much more slowly, if at all, than leaded steel. This comes into play when you are dealing with touch-holes. We use an outside coned touchhole that cones up to within about 1/16 of an inch from the bore. So there is a thin web between the cone and the bore. We have never had a touch hole erode and we have some of our guns with over 10,000shots."
 
I finally shot out, eroded, a touch hole liner to the point of a noticable drop in point of impact. As I had the rifle built with a liner, it was a simple repair.

The builder offered to drill from the off side flat, cone the inside of the touch hole to move the main charge closer to the pan and then tap and plug the off side hole to give the apperance of a drilled barrel. His personal guns were made with liners and I am glad I choose a liner.
 
It is a good thing that we have better steel on our contemporary arms instead of the softer steel our forefathers had, for safety sake. I wouldn't suggest that anyone use a period correct steel on their shooting iron today. The period correctness of touch hole liners are what I'm trying to determine. I don't believe that a straight through touch hole through a barrel with no coning would be unsafe. But was it more common? A straight through hole does make it a little tougher for ignition, doesn't it? I don't know any better,I'm asking.
 
My first thought is that ignition would be slower. But I think it would be a good experiment to try on my next build ! I did have a Brownbess Musket that had no liner' and ignition did not seem to be extra slow :hmm:
 
I've got some slight pitting around the outside of my touch hole on a rifle I've had since '89. The hole itself appears to be the same diameter. I've read that in the day, as touch holes wore out and got too big, some would use a bird feather to stop up the charging powder from dribbling out the touch hole. This must have meant that the frizzen was open and the pan wasn't charged until they were ready to shoot.
And what is this loading while on the run about that Simon Kenton done when being chased and not having time to properly load? I read that he didn't prime his pan. So some of the charging powder must have dribbled out his touch hole so there was a better chance of ignition. My FFg main charging powder won't dribble out my 1/16" hole, which is good I guess. This is why I use a finer powder for priming so there is more powder in the touch hole. There are those I know that don't agree with this method. But my ignition is reliable, albeit slower (milliseconds?). Those with coned touch holes can probably rely on sparks jumping through the hole to the main charge. But is this the way it was done? Or did they load up their pan and keep powder against the touch hole? I don't know the answer to this, but I'm looking for others' thoughts.
 
I would not have a gun without a liner and I like a #50 drill size hole in it. I also like a cone on both sides. In my own tests, powder against the touchhole is best. A few grains in the touchhole does not slow ignition to any noticeable degree, or where, at least, you can “feel” it.
I have read, no firsthand experience, where old timers could prime their pans through the touchhole. Must have been a pretty big hole!
 
There is a line of thought that some holes were conned from the inside and a tool exists to do the job, I do not know of any period reference to this being done, I no longer use a liner but do cone a bit from the inside usng a home made tool and a drill not PC as far as I know, probably not even needed, the liners are way over done today which is strange as it is something so obvious on a gun, I heard a theory that the use of more liners came about after the reconversion from perc. back to flint in the second age of ML's in the 20th century, the larger holes in the past also helped eliminate the need for a liner on new guns.

"But was it more common? A straight through hole does make it a little tougher for ignition, doesn't it? I don't know any better,I'm asking."

I think a straight hole was likley more common and a larger hole as well, the barrels were probably thicker definately on some types of guns,which created even more of a jump for the spark, but they seemed to make them work and if learning to shoot with such a gun the speed of something like the "whitelightning" was probably unknown, so they did not know they were not doing it the best way most tests show differences in millseconds, probably not much if you never had the super fast stuff to compare things to.

:hmm:
 
Thanks TG. That is what I was looking for. Did you use a liner before? If you did, does it take more attention to how you prime? Do you use FFFFg for priming and do you get some in the touch hole? My guns aren't totally pc, they are left-handed and my southern poorboy has a Siler lock. I'm not saying that I have the most pc guns, but I'm thinking todays liners deter from an otherwise pc gun. And not everybody cares that their arm is totally pc. Someday I want to build one that is, and learn to shoot right handed.
 
Its the heat from the burning prime that ignites the powder in the barrel, not bouncing or " leaping " sparks, Guys. If you use a pick to open a hole in the powder, thru your TH, the heat reaches more than one granule of powder, and ignition is accelerated a few milliseconds.

Its next to impossible to make general statements about guns made more than 200 years ago. There is no uniform sized TH, much less agreement on inside coning, or use of a TH liner that is coned, inside or outside. Most guns that old have had their bores " freshed" out- at least enough of them that you cannot reliably make a judgment at this late date about when or IF such work was done. THs in soft iron barrels were subject to more wear, and were often "cleaned up" by a gunsmith for a couple of pennies, by using a larger size drill to "square " the edges of the TH.

One of the reason that "judges " at rendezvous, and re-enactments don't disqualify modern replicas with Liners is that no one can agree on what was or was not done back in the day. If these minor issues disqualified shooters from participating, they would have no shooters! :shocked2: :redface:

These are good questions to ask, but no one should expect any definitive answers. No matter how old a gun is that is "recently discovered", and no matter how long "its been in the family", we just don't have reliable information on what was done to the gun after, or before, it reached the current line of ownership, over many generations. :hmm: :thumbsup:
 
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