Flintlock prominance

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Bushfire

45 Cal.
Joined
Jun 29, 2020
Messages
909
Reaction score
1,866
Location
Australia
Been wondering, reading and not finding a definite answer.

When did the flintlock gain prominence and supersede its predecessors e.g. matchlock, wheel lock etc.

More specific to that, when would that have occurred in New France and the American colonies?
 
What’s a flintlock?
Silly question considering our members. However a simple snaphaunce design was drawn by DaVinci around 1500.
He also drew a Wheellock
People who have copied his design as drawn the springs are too week.
Spanish and Italians were playing with flintlock designs in the 1550s while wheellocks were dominant in Central Europe.
By 1680 most military guns were being made in flintlock, but England was still using mostly match till the assertion of William of orange in the 1690s ( 1694 is the date in my head, but not sure) and wheellocks were not uncommon up to the 1700 on fine Central European rifles.
A shooting match in the 1730s offered a fine snaphaunce rifle as prize.
Indians were painted with large flintlocks in the 1650s
 
Been wondering, reading and not finding a definite answer.

When did the flintlock gain prominence and supersede its predecessors e.g. matchlock, wheel lock etc.

More specific to that, when would that have occurred in New France and the American colonies?
Copied off of Quora

”…since no one knows for certain what year the first true flintlock was made, though it is likely it was sometime between 1610 and 1615. Credit is often given to Marin le Bourgeoys, a multi-talented artisan from Normandy who worked in the court of Kings Henry IV and Louis XIII from about 1600. He had an interest in firearms development and appears to have combined features of snaphance, snap lock, dog lock and miquelet locks to produce what became the first true flintlock. While the flintlock was progressively improved in minor ways over the next 230 years before it began to be replaced the percussion system, it remained fundamentally the same in configuration and form.”

https://www.quora.com/In-what-year-was-the-flintlock-made
 
Back
Top