As a result of dubious judgement, I acquired a (probably) Spanish pistol a while ago. It was missing the #### and had been painted with a thick plasticy varnish but the stock, lock, and barrel and metal work all appear to be original. I made a new #### for it I chose to make one which is more northern european in appearance, partly because I think the most common ones seen are ugly and partly because I think the style that I made is more functional. The most common traditional shape has an upper jaw that has a long post that slides down into a socket in the neck of the #### and I don't think will angle down when gripping a tall flint with a pyrimid shape to the top of it. The shoulder on the upright portion of a northern european #### allows the top jaw to angle down and grip tall triangular flints more easily
Miquelet flint locks are a bit of a pain to work on because it is hard to depress the mainspring with a clamp, because it is so close to the pan and the spring itself is riveted or held with wedges to the sideplate and cannot normally be removed. Anyway, the #### is made and works sort of, I have recased the frizzen and next in line is to scrape the ugly plastic varnish off of the stock. I probably will not shoot the gun much because at the muzzle the barrel is pretty thin. At a guess the caliber is about .60 cal and smoothbore. It is puzzling why many original pistols have such thin barrels and large calibers.
One final note for those tempted to file out a flint ####, instead of milling a piece of 1/2" or 5/8" flat stock to dimension, I cut the future piece out of 1/4" plate then add weld in the vicinity of the lower jaw. It saves a lot of time and effort compared to starting with a piece as thick as the jaw is wide. I use mild steel and case harden where appropriate
cheers mooncoon
Miquelet flint locks are a bit of a pain to work on because it is hard to depress the mainspring with a clamp, because it is so close to the pan and the spring itself is riveted or held with wedges to the sideplate and cannot normally be removed. Anyway, the #### is made and works sort of, I have recased the frizzen and next in line is to scrape the ugly plastic varnish off of the stock. I probably will not shoot the gun much because at the muzzle the barrel is pretty thin. At a guess the caliber is about .60 cal and smoothbore. It is puzzling why many original pistols have such thin barrels and large calibers.
One final note for those tempted to file out a flint ####, instead of milling a piece of 1/2" or 5/8" flat stock to dimension, I cut the future piece out of 1/4" plate then add weld in the vicinity of the lower jaw. It saves a lot of time and effort compared to starting with a piece as thick as the jaw is wide. I use mild steel and case harden where appropriate
cheers mooncoon
