And "now, for the rest of the story". :grin:
Of course it would be silly for me to make a post about fixing the Queen Anne pistol without actually testing it, so today we went to the range.
It had been years sense I last shot my QA because the ignition was so unreliable. (No, I didn't keep records so I don't really know how many Flashes in the Pan I had per shot, but it was several).
Today I was using a .490 ball with a .010 patch over 24 grains of Swiss FFFg. Priming was with Elephant FFFF.
The first shot was instantaneous. Of the first 5 shots, I still had 2 shots which were FITPs but I had not picked the vent before priming.
In both cases, picking the vent allowed the next shot to fire without hesitation. From that point on, I always picked the vent with a paperclip.
Out of 17 shots fired, I had, as I mentioned only 2 FITPs. All of the rest of the shots were very fast. So much so, that an onlooker made a comment about how he always thought Flintlocks were slow to fire and this one seemed to shoot as soon as the flash occured. :grin:
This pistol has a very good sparking lock but the trigger pull is...how should I say..."very Military". That means it takes a frightened soldier to get enough strength to pull the trigger.
When I got home and took the gun apart to clean it I found the source of the heavy trigger.
The sear arm was being pinched by the bridle and was dragging on the sideplate. Also, the sear spring was much stouter than it should have been.
This may be Pedersoli's method of making sure the sear engages the tumbler slots despite the stiff moving sear but it does take some of the fun out of shooting the gun.
To remove the binding of the sear arm, I gently ground some material off of the backside which rubs against the lockplate. I removed only enough material to remove the "pinch" between the bridle and the sear body.
I then removed a little more material (about 2 thicknesses of paper) from the same side, aft of, and in front of the thru hole, leaving the area around the hole standing proud of the material on both sides of it.
I also gently ground just a little of the material off of the lower legs side of the spring starting at the U bend and going forward to the lower tip. The area where the screw is, I left alone.
Between these modificatons the trigger pull is now about 3 1/2 to 4 pounds which is still heavy, but it is a lot better than it was.
Accuracy? Well, remembering this is a .50 caliber smoothbore with a very tapered barrel, a Cannon muzzle bulge and no sights I'll just say I would have got "him" every time.
I actually think I did better when I forgot about "aiming" and just pointed it "thinking thru" or just concentrating on the target as a whole. (I don't know how to describe this any better, but I do know those of you who shoot a lot of pistols know what I mean).
Him, in this case was two 12 X 12 targets posted with one on top and one on the bottom making a 12 inch wide X 24 inch tall zone.
I posted this at 10 yards.
The width of the group was about 6 inches pretty much centered but the vertical height was about 15 inches.
Although there are many who say this pistol isn't exactly "right", I think it does represent the type of pistol carried by some in the French/Indian war era.
Zonie
