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I can send you the French Navy manual on the construction of Chassepot cartridges if you want to do them properly. Use natural rubber bicycle inner tube for the rubber disk. It plays an important role in cleansing the breech. As does the silk gauze wrapping. Best not to talk further on these...

It would appear that I have come to the wrong place to ask a polite question about flintlocks in search of enlightenment. My thanks to the gentleman who took the trouble to defend me.

Has anyone have any experience or input on such a thing? Titanium seems to have the capacity to act just as a steel hammer does but with a hotter white spark of titanium shavings from a flint. This chap is using a titanium fire starter of the same pattern as steel ones and it works well from the...

Re the nomenclature discussions, one should remember that all pre percussion locks had their foundation in tinder boxes etc. for fire starting. Early flints for flintlocks were the same as ones for tinder boxes. All fire locks were essentially hande gonnes with a tinder fire starter bolted on...

You can see the early versions of the breech stock shape in the early snap matchlocks in your attachment. It makes me think of the link to India in that both Central Europe and India were on either side of the Ottoman empire so it is feasible that the design wandered across that empire to be...

Has anyone tried lead acetate soaking their tinder fungus? Not a difficult period thing to make, only needing lead soaking in vinegar until well corroded. I used no6 shot for my current batch. Leave it to dry out and you will find white lead acetate splinter crystals which you can store until...

Richard Jeffries book ‘Bevis: The Story of a Boy’ (Bevis : the story of a boy : Jefferies, Richard, 1848-1887 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive) published in 1882 describes the making of a matchlock with a heat interference fit breech further secured by peening the rear...

Given the internal shape of Indian matchlock breech chambers I suspect that the insistence on ‘six fingers’ was to fill the chamber. Good powder filling it and all going off at once from adiabatic heating must have been quite a brisk recoil and peak pressure.

The poet quoted is William Blake, whose printmaking techniques I am trying to emulate. I was but wee thing in Malaya when we stopped the car on the road in Malaya and I was told the two shining eyes moving in front of us in the jungle was a Tiger.

The attached are taken from Lieutenant Forsyth‘s book ‘Highlands of Central India’. He of Forsyth rifling fame. and one of the matchlock men

So rare that even I have one and I know at least six people who do as well. A couple having more than one. Uncommon but not rare but it is good news that they will be making them. Hopefully with the service 1:120 twist and with the drop of the early rifles and not the over straight later ones.

Very sorry to hear that Bill has finally passed away. He was very free with his informed advice and I learned so much from him.

Re the silver wire, a trick, used in the Gulf at least, was to use aluminium wire instead of silver. Inset as wire (or a thin strip sliced off the edge of a sheet of scrap) it looks much the same as silver in the wood where folk rarely polish it. Softer too and much less springy and definitely...

Lest anyone not realise, despite the IMA title these are not British Brunswick rifles. They are Nepalese made Nepal government copies of the 1st Pattern Brunswick Rifle and not made to the same standards nor of the same quality materials. Some are fine, even excellent, but some have inherent...

I would mention that service military dimensions are not a suitable guide for hunting cartridges. The military had to allow for maybe 50 or 60 rounds being fired and the dimensions allow windage for the inevitable fouling whereas in hunting one is looking at a single shot that can be cleaned...

I have heard that the snaphaunces of the Moroccan Amazigh were patterned after the English ones taken from Tangiers while the English were there. It is possible that some of the gunsmiths are relatives of mine (from over a thousand years ago!) expelled from Spain taking their expertise with...

How do you cope with shrinkage on firing the clay plugs formed in the mould? What clay and at what temperature do you fire them?

Try Googling ‘On The Manufacture of Gunflints’ Or http://ia800209.us.archive.org/33/items/onmanufactureofg00skerrich/onmanufactureofg00skerrich.pdf

If that is to my post above then it may be your browser? It works with me on Safari.

Probably been posted before but this is an old paper on the subject which goes into much detail of how the professional knappers made gunflints and is well illustrated. Handy for anyone who wants to give it a go...