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I have that article from 1978 in the Guns& Ammo BlackPowder Annual on Fine Tuning the Flintlock, which I can make a copy available to you if you send me a PT with your mailing address.
There is NO standard lock measurement. There are angles you need to work with, but not lengths and distances.
Understand, EACH lockmaker uses standard measurements for HIS LOCK models, and various jigs are made up to aid in meeting those dimensions during the construction process. I am assuming that your question is not asking about a PARTICULAR LOCK MAKER's products( or you would have named the lock maker you were interested in), but rather for more general information.
The Flintlock was invented back in the days where there were no Standard units of measurement, and DIVIDERS were used to measure lengths and mark locations. Since everything was made one-at-a-time, the very concept of standard measurments was not thought about in those days.
Eli Whitney is credited with inventing standardization in gun parts back in the early 1800s. Any lock made before then was basically a custom lock- even military locks had hand fitted parts( Brown Bess, Charleyville, etc.)
Nothing has change in the modern era simply because so many flinlock actions are copied from original flintlock actions! :shocked2: Only when you get to Thompson Center firearms do you see an attempt to create a whole new lock, using coil springs internally, and thus find fixed measurements.
I wrote my article on Shooting and Tuning Flintlocks, back in 2004, which has been republished here, under " Articles ", up in Member Resources, at the top of the index page. That was a summary of all the knowledge I had, about getting flintlock actions to work properly, at the time.
I wrote it at the urging of my ex-wife because she thinks I can write, and she also thought I knew as much or more about tuning flintlocks as anyone else living. She didn't want something to happen to me, and all that knowledge lost again. She also didn't want my friend, L. Don Latter, who died at age 36 back in 1990, to be forgotten. It was he who taught me so much of what I learned about tuning locks.
Since then, taking suggestions and comments from this Forum, I have learned a few new " tricks", that do not appear in that article, for tuning the locks.
Any time I hear of, or meet someone who tunes locks, or works with them, I try to sit down with them and talk about locks. Its a bit of obsession for me. :hmm: :wink: Like my late friend, I try to find out everything I can about flintlock actions, and how to make a particular lock work faster. :hatsoff:
