Flint Life

[detent]

Well I'v stirred up a small hornets nest with frizzen springs So let try flint life (those annoying brits are back).Based on English black flint Brandon Suffolk, Military figures for the period.
A bad flint or pore setting or lock geometry 0shots A good flint 10 to 12 shots
A really good flint 20 shots
Now your thinking that's not much well if you were standing in a clearing with a bright red coat with a nice big white cross and manage to fire 4shots before some sneaky back woodsman made you a permanent U.S.resident I think you probably done well.
What shortens the life of a flint,bad setting, ,frost damage to the stone, pore lock geometry,and a soft frizzen this pulls pieces of the flint instead of sparking.So how do I know if the frizzen is hard or soft,?you should not be able to file it and the aparks will be white, a soft frizzen wont spark at all, and one halthard will have red sparks that may not be hot enough to ignite the powder by the time thay get there.

When I grind a hard blade the sparks are red and a soft blade the sparks are white well your right but fore some reason its the other way round with a frizzen, dont forget its the frizzen that sparks not the flint. My apologies to any back woodsmen if needed

 

[rafterob]

Well, there are Backwoodsmen and then there are Backwards woodsmen. The latter would not realize they're being insulted :wink:

 

[paulab]

Armourer....could you please explain "frost damage"? Over here in the colonies, It isn't uncommon for us to hunt with flintlocks with temps in the single digits. Also, our local flints and cherts have been subject to frost damage since the last glacier receeded about 10,000 years ago. Thanks Paul

 

[Rifleman1776]

Armourer....could you please explain "frost damage"? Over here in the colonies, It isn't uncommon for us to hunt with flintlocks with temps in the single digits. Also, our local flints and cherts have been subject to frost damage since the last glacier receeded about 10,000 years ago. Thanks Paul

That's a polite way of putting it. Statement has me scratching my head also.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Winston Churchill said of the British and American people, " we are two peoples divided by a common language".

" Say what?" is a common and legitimate question. And, both peoples have many occasions on which to ask the question. When you consider how many new words are created by American Pop and Scientific cultures, its amazing that dictionary editors can ever catch up!

 

[detent]

first let me say I am talking about English Black flint which lays under chalk normally below the water table fore millions of years (nothing is solid )now when you bring it the surface and leave it in bad frost it develops small cracks sometimes it completely splits (okay prove it )take a small piece of fresh dug flint about egg size should do plunge it in liquid Co2 It will probably explode bit extsream I know, There is another comparable object Glass which you also tend to think of as solid take a very old piece of glass to your glazier and ask him to cut it he will probably say at your risk or !!!!! Off, and that was only in the wet and cold fore perhaps 20 years.If you were buying fore the military in millions that would be bad news, dont suppose you want to be wasting you money either

 

[Rifleman1776]

You live there, I hate to dispute you.
But, I lived in the U.K. for three years at one time. I remember some very damp, uncomfortable and chilly winters but never any freezing weather. I have even seen the flint source in Dover (White clffs) and shivered mightly when the temps were around 50 degrees Farenheit. :shocked2: But, freezing? I don't think it happened in the current or previous millenium. In fact news reports of a record cold in 2010 where the temp. was well above freezing:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/02/british-winter-coldest-30-years
Even winters in Maine are not as cold as liquid CO2.
I won't flat out say you are wrong. But, I will say I'm not worrying about my flints freezing up anytime soon. atriot:

 

[detent]

You should have been here in the sixties I am not suggesting you need worry at all even if your shooting polar bears.Hope you enjoyed your stay Bentwaters or Mildenhall ?

 

[Black Hand]

Between 1 and 100 shots. Much depends on the flint itself and the lock.

 

[Rifleman1776]

You should have been here in the sixties I am not suggesting you need worry at all even if your shooting polar bears.Hope you enjoyed your stay Bentwaters or Mildenhall ?

I was there for three years 1960-1963. Do not recall where I stayed. It was not the high rent district for sure. Power went out. I got a shave at a barber shop with straight razor, only time in my life. Was chilly but Harris tweed and sweater bearable.

 

[Joel/Calgary]

I won't flat out say you are wrong. But, I will say I'm not worrying about my flints freezing up anytime soon.

I suspect that there are multiple miscommunications & misunderstandings at play here. My understanding from the 19th century descriptions of the gunflint manufacturing in the 18th & 19th centuries is that the preference for the damp flint as freshly dug was because it worked better/easier than surface-collected or even shallow buried flint, and procedures were established to try to maintain the dug flint in the fresh state until it could be worked. This view appears to have been held for thousands of years, as great effort was expended to mine the same deeper layers of flint when the tools available were picks of red deer (elk) antler and shovels of scapula, while there were millions of tons of flint cobbles on the surface, in beaches, etc. Certainly, there would have been times when what at hand was used, but when large-scale manufacturing was envisioned, the difference was worth the effort required to obtain the best raw materials. Whether this perceived change in workability is due to dessication (adsorbed/absorbed intermolecular water, trace residual opaline material, or whatever), as was generally opined, possibly compounded by frost damage of the fresh/damp tabs & cobbles, or something else entirely, those who made their living fabricating things from this rock were convinced of its reality, as are many modern flint knappers. For another thing, the smaller an object is, the the smaller the thermal stresses will be, and all of this discussion concerned the source flint. I cannot recall comparable mention of a change in the effective properties of the finished hand axe, knife blade, or gunflint.

Regards,
Joel

 

[aeatwood]

You live there, I hate to dispute you.
But, I lived in the U.K. for three years at one time. I remember some very damp, uncomfortable and chilly winters but never any freezing weather. I have even seen the flint source in Dover (White clffs) and shivered mightly when the temps were around 50 degrees Farenheit. :shocked2: But, freezing? I don't think it happened in the current or previous millenium. In fact news reports of a record cold in 2010 where the temp. was well above freezing:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/02/british-winter-coldest-30-years
Even winters in Maine are not as cold as liquid CO2.
I won't flat out say you are wrong. But, I will say I'm not worrying about my flints freezing up anytime soon. atriot:

Well, the thing about rocks, is that rocks is old. 8) Nodules on the surface may have been there since the last ice age? 1/2 mile of ice anyone? Then you have the Little Ice Age, from roughly 1550-1850. From wikipedia: "The first River Thames frost fair was in 1607; the last in 1814, although changes to the bridges and the addition of an embankment affected the river flow and depth, hence diminishing the possibility of freezes." The frost fairs were when the Thames froze so solid, there were literally carnivals set up on the ice for weeks at a time.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Lots of idea and notions about a lot of things can hang on for a long time be they right or wrong.
When I first started raising cattle I was told a lot of things by the old timers that just didn't seem logical. e.g. never touch a bull on the head because he will go crazy. Balderdash, I petted my bulls on the head all the time and they were as gentle as a sleeping kitten.
I'll accept what the scientists told me, water might penetrate flint to a depth of one micron after 500 years of soaking. Suggestion is a powerful thing. If you tell a knapper wet flint is softer, he might actually believe his wet flints work easier.

 

[detent]

500years is not what I said, We talking million of years soaking other than that I pretty much agree with most of what you said. It was about 1968 when I spent my day with the Flint nappers who's family had been napping flints well over a hundred years they could even make link chains out of flint
(some are still in Brandon Museum ) the flint they used was about the size of a football most of the time, it was when I said I'd go home and practice using flint off the field that they told me why I should not bother. Take some of ours boy (you cant carry much flint on a motor bike)so they weren't, being over generous, this was one of the few times that I was given a good explanation from a tradesman most of the time its a trade secret which means they don't know , or the other one is that's the way its always been done which means they don't know but there's probably a dame good reason fore it somewhere, Such As only Hardening or tempering on a rising heat (someone else can explain that one) I'd rather be in the workshop shape-ping metal wood or even horn.

 

[Rifleman1776]

million of years soaking

OK, I yield for now. :surrender:
Will report back in two million years. Got some flint soaking now. :wink:

 

[detent]

I wood say you have pretty much hit it on the head there, Not concerned about mine freezing ether after there cut. Thanks

 

[Stumpkiller]

I have hunted to -15°F (-26°C) and have noticed no change in flint properties. There may be some, but I imagine there isn't enough moisture in the flint to cause noticable freezing pressures internally unless it exists in a flaw - which is a failure point regardless of temperature.

Glass, by the way, does not have a crystaline matrix like flint. It is an amorphous solid and does not change phases between solid and liquid forms. ;-)

 

[jerrywh]

I,m in Baker City Oregon. We shoot matches here at zero to 10 degrees almost every winter with flintlocks, no problem with flints. The trappers journals from Peter sceene Ogden never mentioned any such thing nor did any of the other trappers journals I have read and they were caught in weather as low as -40°. I hunted deer two years ago at 10° and killed my deer with an flintlock English sporting rifle. Never had a problem. I use English Black Flints. However we never dip ours in Liquid Carbondioxide ot liquid nitrogen. So maybe thats your problem.

 

[detent]

I think we have all rather stray into the most insignificant part of the original forum, my sole intention is to help those who are quite obviously having problems shooting there flintlocks and it is quite evident that some of these shooters are going it alone and the last thing we need is fore them to give up in pure frustration now I am willing to admit that there are people out there who know more than I do (he who think he knows every thing will only learn nothing )but we have to start somewhere. One of the main things I like about old firearms is there is always an exception to the rule.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Sir, we (at least some of us) do recognize you are trying to help. Please understand that us Yanks can have strange senses of humor. We have developed tough skins. Those bayonet tips hurt, we had to develop thick skins. :v
Hang in there, we are happy to have you. Even those of us who might disagree with you from time to time appreciate your contributions thus far. Keep them coming.