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Yes, please do continue public discussion - very helpful!

No, don't try heating them if you want them for gunflints. Proper heat treatment does improve knapping quality, but weakens the stone. For gunflints, you want it hard.

Thanks guys for all the helpful suggestions, I'll try some. Using an anti-fog gel yesterday, helped some but in still air, my hot breath goes up to the lenses. If there's a bit of breeze, they're fine. Yes, I do worry about flashes of reflected light. In bright sun, I can take the glasses off...

I'd like some advice from experienced hunters - I'm hunting in winter, and need to wear glasses to see sights and target, but unless the breeze is right, my glasses are likely to get fogged by my breath, especially when I wear face covering. Suggestions?

Why matchlocks? Good question. When Nepal was 'subdued' (1805 I think) by the East India Co and started to get their Brown Bess muskets, they shortly began making good copies (and went on to copy Martinis and all the other British guns). All of India had long traditions of excellent metal work...

Thank you peserey, very interesting. As rickystyl says, black like English flint. But it is certainly not worked in English manner - it is shaped bifacially, not a segment of a blade. It's like the gunflints reported in Albania by Evans in the 19th Century. You may be right about miquelets for...

Very nice! If it still had an original load, the gunflint is probably also original. Can you post a couple pics of the gunflint? To explain my interest shortly, I study gunflints. We know a lot about the British and French gunflint industries, but very little about the Ottoman and other ones...

Obsidian is NOT flint, it is volcanic glass, and too fragile to make good gunflints, though it knaps well for arrowheads.

The Ottoman military bands (mehter) had considerable influence on European 18th C and earlier military bands, and also on classical composers like Beethoven.

Go back further - La Salle's failed expedition to the coast of Texas in 1686. All sorts of stuff - pirates, mutiny, shipwreck, hostile natives, desperate tale of survival. Or the Conquistadors, Pizzarro in Peru, Coronado into our SW, Cortez vs the Aztecs, Ponce de Leon and De Soto in our SE, all...

Any of you knife experts recognize these? I bought them for pennies for shop knives, and can't find any info, partly because any online search with "Ontario" and "knife" gets swamped by Ontario Knife Co, which these are not. Handles look like recent, intended for steak knives, pins instead of...

Is a "lager bore" the same as a beer barrel?

If you're not stuck on N. America, there are quite a few movies about the English Civil Wars. By The Sword Divided was a BBC series in the 80's I remember.

Yes, what is his usual market? Is there a local antique shooting tradition, or are these mainly show-off pieces for the wealthy the way some of the fancy swords are being refurbished and new made in the Middle East?

Lenk's book is astonishingly boring and hard to use. But try this one: Early English Firearms: A Re-examination of the Evidence Straube, Beverly Ann p 1990 Early English Firearms: A Re-examination of the Evidence. Masters Thesis, College of William and Mary. Early English Firearms: A...

Making 'correct' British or French style gunflints is a highly specialized skill that takes a lot of practice, and good material. BUT you don't have to do that. Anyone can learn fairly easily to make flakes and trim them to shape as usable gunflints if you can get decent flint or many American...

Strong springs for poor flints - we need some experiments. The Ottoman empire did have some flint industries as well as flourishing gun makers. Albanian flint knappers were mentioned (fire-flints) by Evans in 1890s. A village in W Turkey called Cakmak (meaning fire striker) made flints for...

Very cool interesting part of the BP gun world. Now, does anyone have a collection of flintlock tools they would like to show? I think Baker had an ingenious one supposed to accompany his military rifles.

Waitaholdit! The armorer guy demonstrates loading a percussion longrifle, just 'stuff the slug down the barrel' (should have a patch!). And then there's the "1880s" flintlock blunderbus - 100 yrs wrong date.

Excellent idea.