Dog Lock?

Philip Chua · Jun 30, 2024

This was sold by one of the companies on eBay located in India as a snaphaunce lock. I’ve finally gotten a little cleaning and messing about with it and this is a Doglock right? It’s been a lot of fun to work on getting it to function again: I’ve been buying a few of these because they are relatively cheap and I’m not destroying anything of significant collectors value.

Anyway, there is nothing that slides the pan open and closed and it definitely has a working dog on it for a “half cock” sort of position.

Doc Phil

rickystl · Jun 30, 2024

Hi Philip

I believe this lock is the one currently used to build the India made Doglock musket. It's an advancement over the earlier snaphaunce. The main innovation being the one-piece frizzen and pan cover. It's usually referred to as the "English" or "Jacobean" lock.
The earlier, original lock style had only the one notch on the tumbler for the firing position, like the snaphaunce. So, it was necessary to include an external, dog-like safety catch since the frizzen and pan cover were now one-piece. The snaphaunce, with it's separate frizzen and pan cover allowed the frizzen to be placed in the forward position, out of striking distance to act as the safety.

Rick

Sam squanch · Jun 30, 2024

Let us know how it cleans up.

Philip Chua · Jun 30, 2024

Sam squanch said:
Let us know how it cleans up.

Today was the first reassembly after getting a great deal of surface rust off. My god the springs are stiff! But they are already softening up. I may need to anneal the frizzen spring but the main spring seems OK now. Tomorrow I’m gonna try to smooth it up a lot more. I have a 42” 50 cal swamped barrel with a slightly out of spec bottom flat that I got from Colerain. Going to try to scratch build a stock for it. Lord knows how that will go but I’m having fun.

Rudyard · Jun 30, 2024

rickystl said:
Hi Philip

I believe this lock is the one currently used to build the India made Doglock musket. It's an advancement over the earlier snaphaunce. The main innovation being the one-piece frizzen and pan cover. It's usually referred to as the "English" or "Jacobean" lock.
The earlier, original lock style had only the one notch on the tumbler for the firing position, like the snaphaunce. So, it was necessary to include an external, dog-like safety catch since the frizzen and pan cover were now one-piece. The snaphaunce, with it's separate frizzen and pan cover allowed the frizzen to be placed in the forward position, out of striking distance to act as the safety.

Rick

Well new to me but interesting , Ide suggest you reposition the Dog catch lest the flint of any size will impede the face of the Battery ( moderns call a frizzen ) If you modfie the scear nose so as it slides up the ramp you can get an affective half cock in addition to your protruding scear nose giveing you full cock I've made these sorts in varius styles, Ile see what references I have to lead you to better understanding of these sorts. There are a LOT of these" Enigma variations on a popular theme by Mendelson ". But they all generally give you a cattywompas throw of the cock so generally spark well reliably .More then anon .
Regards Rudyard

Philip Chua · Jun 30, 2024

Rudyard said:
Well new to me but interesting , Ide suggest you reposition the Dog catch lest the flint of any size will impede the face of the Battery ( moderns call a frizzen ) If you modfie the scear nose so as it slides up the ramp you can get an affective half cock in addition to your protruding scear nose giveing you full cock I've made these sorts in varius styles, Ile see what references I have to lead you to better understanding of these sorts. There are a LOT of these" Enigma variations on a popular theme by Mendelson ". But they all generally give you a cattywompas throw of the cock so generally spark well reliably .More then anon .
Regards Rudyard

Any help would be much appreciated. It's been a lot of fun learning how all these things work.

FlinterNick · Jul 1, 2024

Philip Chua said:
This was sold by one of the companies on eBay located in India as a snaphaunce lock. I’ve finally gotten a little cleaning and messing about with it and this is a Doglock right? It’s been a lot of fun to work on getting it to function again: I’ve been buying a few of these because they are relatively cheap and I’m not destroying anything of significant collectors value.

Anyway, there is nothing that slides the pan open and closed and it definitely has a working dog on it for a “half cock” sort of position.

Doc PhilView attachment 331060 View attachment 331061

This is more appropriately called an English lock, not a Dog Lock, even though it does have a dog catch, there are features of this lock that retains a much earlier design, including the use of pins and a lateral sear. These locks were improvements to the Snaphaunce Era.

The mainspring doesn’t look correct, mainsprings of this lock type were more larger, in the case of this lock there would be no need for such a large plate.

A couple of quick observations, the internal parts do not look hardened.

The Sear looks like it has a crack in it, there’s a lot of pressure placed on the sear on these locks, you’ll want to make sure all surface cracks are filed away then the parts are hardened and tempered.

The integral sear lugs need to be straight also, so that the sear can privot freely, the bottom one looks slightly bent.

deGheyn · Jul 1, 2024

Yes, what they said above, it's an English lock. Mine was sold as an "English Civil Wary Cavalry Pistol". I don't shoot it often, but it has been reliable when I do. Grease helps on the springs. Keep us posted on how your build turns out.

deGheyn · Jul 1, 2024

Here's an idea for your build: Leonard Day English lock

Philip Chua · Jul 19, 2024

Ok folks have a Q - the mainspring screw is stripped. It was kinda bad to begin with and my repeated assembly and disassembly I’ve stripped it. Have tap and die sets and the screw threads nicely into 8-32 but an 8-32 is too big and 6-32. On the metric side it’s M3.5x0.6mm and M4x0.7mm. Screws are cheese head type. I had tried some M4 and like the 8-32 seems to big and the threads didn’t match (like thread interference).

Oooh there is an 8-40. Maybe it’s that.

What sucks is that I live rural so don’t have many places to try out screws for fit!!! I’m going to order a few different sizes of bolts and hope something fits. Worst case scenario I drill out & tap the mainspring hole for M4 or 8-32. Since it’s an English Lock made in India I have zero clue what this should be. The other lock screw holes are a different size. What a pain!!!

FlinterNick · Jul 19, 2024

Philip Chua said:
Ok folks have a Q - the mainspring screw is stripped. It was kinda bad to begin with and my repeated assembly and disassembly I’ve stripped it. Have tap and die sets and the screw threads nicely into 8-32 but an 8-32 is too big and 6-32. On the metric side it’s M3.5x0.6mm and M4x0.7mm. Screws are cheese head type. I had tried some M4 and like the 8-32 seems to big and the threads didn’t match (like thread interference).

Oooh there is an 8-40. Maybe it’s that.

What sucks is that I live rural so don’t have many places to try out screws for fit!!! I’m going to order a few different sizes of bolts and hope something fits. Worst case scenario I drill out & tap the mainspring hole for M4 or 8-32. Since it’s an English Lock made in India I have zero clue what this should be. The other lock screw holes are a different size. What a pain!!!

I would just redrill and tap it with a slightly bigger screw.

Rudyard · Jul 20, 2024

FlinterNick said:
I would just redrill and tap it with a slightly bigger screw.

No No its not a Pain its the joys of Dog locking Your piece will most likley" shoot far or near & murther more & better cheap "Or some such period babble ! Flinter Nicks solution sounds good 10 unc probably be what to try next .
Regards Rudyard

Commodore Swab · Jul 20, 2024

The threads are SAE but the diameters are a little off. Retreating for metric would be a mess. Typically you can go from 8-32 to 10-32 if needed.

FlinterNick · Jul 20, 2024

Rudyard said:
No No its not a Pain its the joys of Dog locking Your piece will most likley" shoot far or near & murther more & better cheap "Or some such period babble ! Flinter Nicks solution sounds good 10 unc probably be what to try next .
Regards Rudyard

for screw replacements i just put them in my mill and clamp them down, line up the arbors and drill out and retap. What really helps is a counter bore on the mainspring eye, the counterbore (not countersink) keeps the screw from over tightening. A little anti seize lube on the threads is also a good idea.

If the screw is too large and the mainspring eye is going to be compromised, i TIG weld the plate up and redrill and tap.

FlinterNick · Jul 21, 2024

Philip Chua said:
Ok folks have a Q - the mainspring screw is stripped. It was kinda bad to begin with and my repeated assembly and disassembly I’ve stripped it. Have tap and die sets and the screw threads nicely into 8-32 but an 8-32 is too big and 6-32. On the metric side it’s M3.5x0.6mm and M4x0.7mm. Screws are cheese head type. I had tried some M4 and like the 8-32 seems to big and the threads didn’t match (like thread interference).

Oooh there is an 8-40. Maybe it’s that.

What sucks is that I live rural so don’t have many places to try out screws for fit!!! I’m going to order a few different sizes of bolts and hope something fits. Worst case scenario I drill out & tap the mainspring hole for M4 or 8-32. Since it’s an English Lock made in India I have zero clue what this should be. The other lock screw holes are a different size. What a pain!!!

With Indian made locks, I would actually replace all of the screws. The problem I’ve seen is that their screws are hand turned, and tend to be pretty sloppy. The screws are also not heat treated and tempered , lock screws should always be tempered blue to withstand corrosion and wear.

Fixing crooked screws is also necessary, if a screw is crooked then it will put an awkward pressure on the pivot, for example a crooked sear screw or frizzen screw will have opposite directional pressure making the screw move.

Lastly is the plate bent or not straight ? If the plate is not straightened true when it was made (I’ve seen this on Indian locks) the drilling operations will be untrue and the lock will have slag, for example if the cock looks crooked at halfcock, its likely the plate is bent and the tumbler screw will eventually break off at some point.

After every drilling operation on a lockplate I check the plate’s orientation to ensure it was not bent, it can easily happen with an annealed plate, and steel can work harden while working on it.

Sam squanch · Jul 21, 2024

Again, these Indian workshops need to produce a miquelet lock. My original Turkish lock is roughly put together, the threaded holes and screws are not great- but by the nature of the design, the spring tension holds the lock together, AND IT WORKS EVERY TIME!! No critical angles or geometry needed…

Dog Lock?

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