Do you bank prime away......?

I have no idea where my priming powder is located in the pan when I shoot the load off. I only know that it was in the pan when I started my hunt. :idunno:

Vern

I agree with Mike on this. I stand my rifle up when I am in my deer stand which causes the powder to bank up on the side of the pan closest to the butstock. When I get ready to shoot a deer I pick up the rifle , cock it put it to my shoulder and fire. I never worry about where the powder is in the pan.

I have no comment about the prime position but just wanted to say that is an extraordinarily fine photo.

I know exactly where the prime is when it fires.
The way in which we shoot in competion, the gun
is level. Here is a touch hole covered with prime.

A well fitted frizzen will seal the touch hole when its closed. Fill it, it will just compress and be below the touch hole and center. Thats if the touch hole is in the right place. It will be out of the way when the sparks hit the powder any way. I have always belived if you put enough prime in it wont shift around it will always be in the same place.

You might want to read this article.

Blackpowder Magazine

I have read Pletch's articles and applaud his efforts. But I shoot a flint lock, not a hot wire lock. My flint drives a line of sparks down into the pan, not a single hot wire on one side or the other. I put barely enough 4fg to cover the bottom of the pan. I also don't use an allen wrench or screw driver touch hole liner. When the main charge is in the barrel, I have grains of 2fg hanging right at the touch hole surface, not at some unknown distance inside the barrel wall. Nor does my main charge powder sift into the pan with handling.

So you can shave some time off of Pletch's .036 seconds? Are you using Null-B? I'm missing something again evidently.

steve

Mike Brooks said:

With a properly located touch hole it doesn't matter where your prime is.

Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

So you can shave some time off of Pletch's .036 seconds? Are you using Null-B? I'm missing something again evidently.


If Pletch used a bank of hot wires in the pan it might be more compatible with the way a flinter works. Don't know if my speed is faster. I just know that my way works extremely well. There are probably shooters who get better speeds. I do know that mine is faster than some newbies and hunters who sometimes show up for matches.

I never hear chunk hisssssssss boom from my gun. I do from many others.

Okay, i think i got it, Mike Brooks and Pletch are correct; with the touch hole located correctly, we cannot tell a difference in ignition time. Thanks,

steve

I think the purpose behind that was to have a constant. Using flints to perform the test would have resulted in too many variables. The test was to show the timing in different pan locations, using a controlled ignition source.

In real life, this would be different, of course.

flintlock62 said:

I think the purpose behind that was to have a constant. Using flints to perform the test would have resulted in too many variables. The test was to show the timing in different pan locations, using a controlled ignition source.

In real life, this would be different, of course.

Click to expand...

Most of us shoot "in real life", so our non-lab experience is very valuable. :grin:

Flintlock62, you are correct.

To all,
I'm glad the Part 5 of the Pan/Vent Experiments is a part of the discussion. I hope you noticed the last paragraph or two where some of the conclusions are drawn.

"In my tests the pan was ignited by a copper wire heated red hot. In the real flint world the sparks need a bed of powder on which to land, and this must be part of or priming procedure. This means that when I prime my locks, my emphasis will be close to the vent rather than away from it, but the bottom of the pan must have sufficient prime for sparks to land in. Thus, how well a lock places its sparks in the pan becomes an equally important consideration."

Click to expand...

I moved prime up against the barrel with a pencil eraser. Obviously, I'm not encouraging that. I went through a lot of steps to eliminate variables for the testing that I certainly don't do for real world shooting. When priming my lock, I dump powder in the pan just like everyone else. I do slap the side of the lock to make sure there is priming up against the barrel. What I don't do is try to move prime AWAY from the vent.

If you have questions about my methodology, I hope you will read the 6 part article all the way through. I jumped through a lot of hoops to keep variables from showing up in the numbers, that a shooter would or could never do. Please note that in Part 3 there are photos that show the strength of the fire entering the vent from different priming locations.

And last, I want to say that information learned about where I prime, wasn't the purpose of the article. I started out to test the effect of high or low vent locations and realized that where the prime was located was a bigger variable than the vent height.

Anyway if you read the whole thing, you will see where my mind was at when I did this. BTW, the conclusions at the end of Part 6 was meant to summarize the whole battery of experiments.
Regards,
Pletch

Pletch said:

Anyway if you read the whole thing, you will see where my mind was at when I did this.

Regards,
Pletch

Click to expand...

But today's standard is to selectively quote, misquote, or ignore anyone who has actual experience! :rotf:

Thanks for all your careful work Pletch, and yeah, some folks actually read your fine reports.

I've kinda enjoyed reading this whole thread. Useful stuff for range shooters. But I'm a hunter, and no matter how I bank the prime, it's going to be somewhere else by the time a shot reveals itself.

Here's my test for flintlocks. I call it the Shake Rattle and Roll method:

Prime the pan.
Lower the cover.
Shake the gun vigorously.
Cock the cock and pull the trigger.

Results are most telling for my needs.

Pletch said:

"...I want to say that information learned about where I prime, wasn't the purpose of the article. I started out to test the effect of high or low vent locations and realized that where the prime was located was a bigger variable than the vent height..."

Click to expand...

And your unselfish use of your personal time, money, and effort with the special photography has made a significant fact based contribution that benefits all Flintlock users.
No keyboard theories or formulas presented as facts...just real facts presented as facts...many thanks !

:hatsoff: :hatsoff:

agree, well thought out, thx pletch

at our range, you prime nly at the firingline.Hank

I wonder if our fore fathers ,who used these things daily.Spent any time leaning against a fence pondering this. :hmm:

I have learned a lot from Pletch's articles. His painstaking efforts aren't lost on me.

I also wonder about the type of touch hole as it relates to speed. be it a plain unlined vent, a semi permanent vent, coned from the inside, coned outside, slotted screw driver vents and those allen wrench vents.

The size of the hole in the vent, etc.

If the inside is such that powder is visible inside the vent at the barrel surface or somewhere further inside, it it faster?

Does the shape of the pan matter, whether oval, square or oblong. Will banking the prime make a difference if the sides of the pan are beveled or perpendicular to the pan bottom. Does pan depth and width matter in this equation?

A flintlock depends on a chain of physical and chemical events to send a ball down range. Speed of the mechanical parts is crucial, speed of the rest of the chain are equally crucial. Doesn't it make sense to have the individual pieces and substances as close as possible to the prior link in the chain. ie having some of the main charge powder as close to the surface of the barrel flat along the pan as possible.