BIrddog: I don't think those comments are called for at all. I didn't attack you personally, and I don't think you should do so to me. I am far from " perfect".
I have been shooting my own flintlock since the late 1970s, about 30 years. I learned a lot of bad lessons as a kid of 12 or so with my father's flintlock.
I had the benefit of learning how to tune a flintlock from a good friend, who had only shot and made flintlocks all his life. He gave up his secrets in exchange for my secrets about tuning percussion locks.
I don't doubt your experience. I just question your alarm about hitting the barrel with a flint, when it takes so little effort to seat it right in the jaws of the cock. As for the angle needed on a flintlock to make it work right, I owe a big debt of gratitude to Buz Fawcett, who wrote an article on "Fine Tuning The Flintlock" published in the Dixe Gun Works' Black Powder Annual magazine back in the 1970s. He in turn, got all the " secret information" from Robert Traurig, of St. Paul, Minn., a friend of Dave Ripplinger, at Track of the Wolf. I still keep the pages of that original article, and make copies for anyone interested. Dixie does not have back issues of their magazines, nor could they tell me what year that article was published. Even Buz did not know, nor have a copy of the article when I tracked him down about 10 years ago. ( I sent him a copy.)
So, do as you please, Birddog. Maybe because I am slower than you, I have spent years studying locks, sorting out the wives tales, from the science, and learning how to make them fire as fast as I can make them. You won't see me holding a gun to anyone's head to force them to do things my way.
