tg said:
John Woolfolk is a good guy with a lot of experience but I do not believe he has every really tried the original plain hole of proper size approch to flintlock ignition which is quite common these days as the story is that one must have a super high tech liner to get a gun to work, those who have given the original method a try know that this is not true. A plain hole of thne proper size will offer very dependable ignition if all other factors are up to snuff. More and more folks are trying this and finding it to their liking and a plus is it duplicates the experience/equipment of the originals, and please do not attempt to inform me that liners go back a long ways. I am quite familiar with the history of vent liners and their time and place of usage in the past.
There are accounts of "bushing" vents in North America and surviving guns with such "bushings". Details are lacking from what I have read and seen however. But thinking that ALL American gunsmiths were ignorant of what was going on in England and Europe is not realistic.
Dan
P.S. I HAVE tried the plain vent of various sizes. When I started out 3/32 plain vent was the standard and I built probably 4 rifles this way and have used others since. Its reliability, clean or dirty, sucks in my experience, but its as good as a poor liner I suppose. As with all things it will fail when its most important for it to not fail. Like when hunting.
If we want to carry the HC thing to extremes then the powder virtually everyone uses is wrong too. Its TOO GOOD. We use all sorts of things that are wrong. Flaked rather than Spalled English flints for example. These did not exist until the about 1800. This is very well documented. But spalled English flints are not available.
If you use Brandon Flints you are no more HC than someone with a modern liner in his barrel.
So we make allowances.
We have alloy steel locks 8620 or even 4140 not even a gleam in anyone's eye in the mid-19th century, we have rifling forms and land groove ratios that are at best rare at the time, etc etc etc. Steel barrels not iron. People use synthetic stains and plastic finishes (both inferior to what was used back in the day AND THEY LOOK DIFFERENT). Then people who use plastic stock finish tell me that a SS vent liner is a no-no?
If you don't want a vent liner don't use it. But the HC thing is simply silly given all the other modern parts, the flints, etc etc on the gun.
Dan
