Early percussion locks

[unspellable]

I think an early form of percussion lock (Or if I'm wrong, they should'a thought of it.) involved a flintlock with the frizzen removed and a hammer in place of the cock. The cap was in the form of a thin tube that would lay in the groove in the pan with the open end inserted in the touch hole.

Now, if a guy was nutty enough to attempt to come up with such a firearm where would he find caps?

 

:hmm: not sure of your thin tube and cap arrangement, but many flintlocks were coverted by removing the pan, frizzen and associated gadgets, replacing the cock with a hammer, drilling out the touchhole and installing a cylinder ('drum') in which the nipple was attached for the cap. This arrangement is still being used today.

 

[bezoar]

If im reading this right your thinking of :

1)-Putting a percussion cap on one end of a small diameter metal tube,

2)-laying the capped tube in your flintlocks pan groove, and putting the open end into/against the touch hole.

3)-And then putting a modified percussion gun hammer on the gun, so that when fired, the hammer only hits that percussion cap which ignites and sends the flash into the touch hole igniting the main charge.


Comments

Last i checked, something like this was never done, the closest youll find is a true percussion weapon called a "mule ear".

What your thinking of posses several problems. Removing the frizzen permanently will encourage absorption of moisture from air/fog/rain/humid air into the powder charge.

And the the cap will expand when fired, most likely jamming it in the groove making it hard to pull out the tube and reprime the gun. A solution would be to cut a small slot in the pan bottom so a short piece of fence wire can be wrapped around the metal tube so it can be pulled out, and maybe inserted easier.

Theoretically you could make your own priming system from light guage steel turned into an oval or winged shape that would fall out of the pan when the gun is turned upside down.

If your interested in trying this out send me a pm with the dimensions for the pan, and the groove in the pan. And since im in a good mood and the idea interests me ill even tell you/make a drawing as to how to turn your flintlock into a percussion gun using solder, hacksaw, drill bit, and a thread tap. And it wont cause any damage to firearm and will use your factory flintlock mechanism and lock plate. And even let you use caps with the frizzen on the gunand acting as a rain shield for the pan.

Historical Information

The first real conversion from flint to percussion was the scent bottle. the pan was replaced with a metal bottle in the shape of a perfume "scent" bottle of the era.
This bottle was filled with one of the fulminate explosives. and when the user wanted to shoot he merely pulled the hammer to full cock and pulled the trigger. Ive seen mention of a modification of metal tubes filled with fulminate that were placed in the bottle instead of pouring it in loose. Didnt last long, the bottles liked to explode from poor metal quality.

 

[bezoar]

unspellable seems to have an interesting conversion system in mind. More of a wheellock mechanism that has a built in matchlock mechanism.

 

[Stumpkiller]

The Rev. Alexander Forsythe of Scotland invented that very thing in 1806/7. A little fulminate of Mercury in a brass tube that exploded when crushed.

Found out that when you had a box of them in your bag and fell down that flint wasn't a bad idea after all. :shocking:

He switched to complicated little brass caps full of fulminate that attached directly to the hammer nose, and finally arrived at the design we have still.

 

If you check back in the elementary firearms history section you will find that the Reverand Forsythe experimented with similar systems around the turn of the 19th century.

There was the tube lock, and the pill lock before they settled on the cap lock.

:redthumb:

 

Yea!!! What Stumpy said!!!


:master: :master:

Great minds think alike!

 

[Stumpkiller]

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[bezoar]

It seems wierd, but it could be a decent way to get rid of inlines, and get them over to sidelocks. And it would help get new flintlock shooters used to the flintlock mechanism while still being "percussion".

 

[unspellable]

The drum and nipple system we are all familiar with would not have been done as a conversion until after the cap we have today was developed. Come to think of it, it was probably called a cap because it "capped" the nipple.

I'm not really a flintlock shooter and so not knowledgeable about them. But as I recall most of the pans I've seen had a groove in line with the touch hole.

The "cap" I was thinking of was a small metal tube filled with fulminate so that if laid in the pan groove the hammer would strike it on the side rather than the end.

As for falling down with a box of them, why would they be any touchier than a cap? Especially if you had a decent carrying box.

Seems to me that doing a conversion for such a system would be simple, the hardest part being to come up with a hammer to replace the cock.

The real sticker, is where would you get the "caps". I don't think I want to mess about with brewing fulminate myself. making such "caps" at home strikes me as being more hazardous than carrying them.

 

[bezoar]

little metal tube with a cap on it can do the same thing your thinking, and not put you into a jail cell if lyou got caught,

 

[unspellable]

We are thinking of a tube smaller in diameter than a cap. It has to go in the touch hole, althogh for such an exercise the touch hole might be enlarged a tad, but not much. It has to have fuliminate down the length of it since it will be struck from the side by the hammer.

Another idea would be one of the old percussion locks that used the tape caps. These have survived down to the present day as roll caps for kid's toy cap guns, so they are at least available.

 

[bezoar]

The roll caps are very corrosive things and not nice to guns. And it can be manufactured so that the whole tube DOES NOT need to be a solid column of fulminate. Put a angled piece of metal in the jaws so that it hits in one place, and just adjust the length of the metal tubes so that the cap is always positioned where the hammer would hit.
And if you have soldering skills you can work yourself up a little rig on a spare flash plug so that you have an actual percussion nipple on the gun, without having to buy a seperate percussion lock and install the drum.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Something just connected to an old synapse on this.

Remember GE Magicubes? A little plunger in the camera (110 and 126 formats) would strike a "tail" that was a primer to the flash-bulb. I wonder what that "tail" was composed of? Looked like a 3/8" length of pencil lead. No electricity or batteries needed. I guess enough kids like myself discovered a Magicube easily peeled apart, leaving you with four impact detonators. Peel the plastic off the glass bulb and crack the upper glass off and you were left with a little cup containing the detonator and a tiny wad of magnesium wool.

I'd have been on the national news today with some of the booby-traps and impact-detonated model rockets I built in high-school and college with these gems.

We used to use the individual bulbs for Polaroid Swingers (another synapse fired) and out of flash-cubes (the electric kind) to launch our rockets once we found they gave instant ignition with match-heads, and later the "solar-igniters" poked into the magnesium wool and taped lightly into the rocket's nozzle. All it took was a single flashlight battery instead of a 12v car battery or a bank of dry-cells, as with the old nichrome wire igniters.

 

[Tumblernotch]

What you're talking about is the Consol system invented by Giuseppe Consol an Italian inventor in 1835. It was improved on by General Vincent Augustin of Austria. Several thousand were actually imported to the northern states during the Civil War.

It was a true conversion from flintlock. The frizzen was removed and a special cap which used the frizzen spring to hold it in place was installed. A hammer replaced the cock. Augustin's improvement was placing a small firing pin in the cap to make ignition more certain. Here is a quote from Maj. Alfred Mordecai of the U.S. Ordnance Dept. who saw this weapon in Austria and reported on it:

"In Austria the greater part of the foot troops are still armed with the smoothbore musket, altered from flint to percussion and adapted to a peculiar kind of priming. This priming consists of percussion powder placed in a copper tube of such size that it can be introduced into the vent of the flint musket. Thus inserted, the primer lies in the groove of an iron seat which is substituted for the pan of the old musket; it is there protected by a cover which corresponds to the lower part of the flint 'battery', and is held down by the battery spring; the percussion hammer, substituted for the flint cock, strikes on the top of this cover, and causes a point which projects from the cover into the pan to strike the tube of percussion powder, and thus fires the charge."

Early in the War there was a big problem with these guns that had been imported to the North because of a shortage of primers. Apparently someone forgot to tell someone else that our caps wouldn't work with them. I found a note stating that at the end of the War that the Ordnance Dept. had on hand "249,641,400 percussion primers, Austrian, etc. (for Consol lock guns), which cost $11,683.50.

I don't guess it was that bad of an idea, but it wasn't good enough. They built thousands of them though. I guess they thought it was a cheap way to convert flintlocks. And as for getting the caps, if there are enough of this type of lock, someone will make the caps. I'll just stick with what I've got.
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