Kilpatrick blunderbuss

[tula]

Here’s last year’s Christmas gift from an older lady Nextdoor to my folks. She was invited over for Christmas dinner and brought an old gun along to show me as she’d heard I collect old flintlocks. This came from up near Belfast where her husband grew up. Locally made by Kilpatrick. As isn’t uncommon with old guns left hanging in Europe, this one which spent most of it’s life hanging over the fireplace in a Croft house on her husbands family farm met its share of wood borers. She told me when we were getting ready to leave that I was to take that home with me. Her husband having passed away three years earlier. I’ve since made up a mix of pine rosin, beeswax and linseed colour matched it as close as possible and filled the holes.
And sourced a new top jaw that fits it.
Have to turn a screw yet and will likely have to rethread the hole in the c0ck because it won’t me an available thread pitch. Aside from the missing top jaw and screw it’s complete and quite nice. One of the gems in my collection.

 

[tiriaq]

Very nice!

 

[B_noser]

Nice. Suggest you not rethread the c0ck. Do a cast of the threads and get someone with a lathe to copy it. Should be easy to thread in a piece of softwood to get a pattern.

 

[tula]

Nice. Suggest you not rethread the c0ck. Do a cast of the threads and get someone with a lathe to copy it. Should be easy to thread in a piece of softwood to get a pattern.

Great idea Laurie, I know just the machinist, he’s my go to for odd things like that. I forgot all about that approach.

 

[tiriaq]

^^^^^
Tula is very experienced, I expect he has done this.
I make a tapered square piece of hardwood and screw it into the hole to pick up the threads, then carefully measure the pitch.
Once I have that, I proceed to turn the screw on the lathe, advancing the tool until the #### can be threaded onto the screw. The rest of the top jaw screw is then formed.

 

[tula]

^^^^^
Tula is very experienced, I expect he has done this.
I make a tapered square piece of hardwood and screw it into the hole to pick up the threads, then carefully measure the pitch.
Once I have that, I proceed to turn the screw on the lathe, advancing the tool until the #### can be threaded onto the screw. The rest of the top jaw screw is then formed.

I have done this. And for some reason it just didn’t cross my mind this time. I haven’t done it in a few years though. And that was to
Measure a regular modern screw size and pitch. I’ll give it a shot and pass the cast along to my machinist buddy who I usually get to lathe turn threads for me.

 

[tiriaq]

Here is a top jaw screw I made as described above. Cut the threads on the lathe, matching the threads in the c ock. Note that the threads are not modern sharp V cut profile. Researched what the top jaw screw should look like, as far as its head and the little decorative tit are concerned. Finished the screwdriver slot with a knife file, so the sides are not parallel. Cleaned up and case hardened.
The gun is a 16 bore single, James Wilkinson & Son, finished in September 1822.
The top jaw is an old replacement. Whoever made it did a good job, but no engraving.
I think the most common cause of broken top jaw screws is snapping the lock without a flint or hardwood substitute.

 

[tula]

Here is a top jaw screw I made as described above. Cut the threads on the lathe, matching the threads in the c ock. Note that the threads are not modern sharp V cut profile. Researched what the top jaw screw should look like, as far as its head and the little decorative tit are concerned. Finished the screwdriver slot with a knife file, so the sides are not parallel. Cleaned up and case hardened.
The gun is a 16 bore single, James Wilkinson & Son, finished in September 1822.
The top jaw is an old replacement. Whoever made it did a good job, but no engraving.
I think the most common cause of broken top jaw screws is snapping the lock without a flint or hardwood substitute.


View attachment 861313View attachment 861314

That’s exactly how this one broke. She told me her husband and his brothers used to play with it and dry fire without a flint, and that’s how it broke. I found a top jaw that fits it in a big box of odds and ends of muzzleloader parts a young fella near me had. Which was a fluke. I had originally planned to just make my own. I’ll make a screw up for it and age it up. I have a very similar lock on another gun and I’ll copy the head off that.