atlantacutlery.com has some typical original flints for sale on their site.
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Historic Expetations of Flint Life
- Thread starter Zonie
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I have seen some large musket flints at a museum and as mentioned they left a lot to be desired, in shape and some looked to be spalls.I don't know if or when the French method of making long flakes and braking off individual flints spread to all the major areas that had the raw mayerial t make their own product or if France and England were the major suppliers world wide throughout the flint era, if I recall during the F&I England had yet to discover the Frenches highly guarded secret method of making flints and England obtained the supperior French flints thru other countries as the French understandably were not interested in selling them any.
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rich pierce said:
The shape of the flints varied with both time and nationality. Early in the 18th c "gun spalls" (a somewhat crudely shaped wedge of flint) were common. The more refined trapezoidal shape that we associate with the "Tom Fuller Black English Flint" of today came a bit later, especially in England. The two forms had overlap in their use as well - The Tower of London has a group of flints recovered from the wreck of the Earl of Abergaveney (lost in 1805). The group has 7 gun flints of the spall form and 20 gun flints of the flake type. 'Colonial Frontier Guns' by Hamilton has four interesting articles on gun flints including a quote of a 1757 order from William Pitt for 200 rounds of ammunition and 20 flints for each of the 5000 men leaving for America. Another source on gun flint history and evolution is the 1984 reprint of Sydney Skertchly's 'The Manufacture of Gunflints' from 1879.
Here's the Atlanta Cutlery photo. Note they are squarish and somewhat irregular and a few of them are spall type. I have my own theories on spall versus blade type flints and their emergence,co-existence, and etc., based solely on experience making gunflints. It takes a good sized core of uniform material to produce decent blades. The knowledge of how to prepare cores and strike off blades has been around Europe since Cro-Magnon times. Unless it became a lost art (possible), the technique seems unlikely to have been restricted to one country or another. There is plenty of evidence that very regular flints were struck as blades for strike-a-light use from pre-Roman times, all through the 18th century. So why use or make spall type flints at all? They can be made from most any small, irregular and non-homogeneous piece of flint. So if the nodules available in this country or region or that were small, irregular, and varied in their texture, spall style flints would be more efficient to produce. I make both depending on the rock I have in my hand,and as it "runs out" will make spall flints from a core that just a minute ago produced blades. I just continue to work them until they roughly resemble blade-origin flints as folks have certain expectations of what their gunflints should look like.
Rich, when I looked at that same photo on their website I swear its been photo-shopped...for example, look at the odd shaped flint which seems to have a round top...there are 4 in the photo, and if you look at their distinguising marks, they're the same flint. Same with the others...there's really only about 4-5 actual flints...they have simply been copied and fit into that photo to make it look like there's several flints in a group
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The spalls illustrated in the books in my post tend to be more square than rectangular and sometimes have a rounded rear edge as do several in the photo you posted. The spalls taper from back to front with only one useable edge.
Good eyes, Roundball. No wonder you're a good shooter! I edited my post to add more ideas- they are just ideas w/o any documentation. I've read most of the sources but don't necessarily buy into the idea that some flintknappers did not know how to strike blades. That would be like some shoe salesmen not knowing how to tie shoes. Could happen, of course.
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Actually theres only 2 spalls, roundballs right that photo has been played with to make it look like more flints than there actually is.
"The spalls taper from back to front with only one useable edge. "
You can if things go right knock off a spall with three or 4 useable edges, it depends on the core flake you start with and probably luck/experience.
I see that here are some lookalikes there, without my glasses I could not really get down and look them ovewr closely
You can if things go right knock off a spall with three or 4 useable edges, it depends on the core flake you start with and probably luck/experience.
I see that here are some lookalikes there, without my glasses I could not really get down and look them ovewr closely
"That would be like some shoe salesmen not knowing how to tie shoes. Could happen, of course."
I suspect that as the French were ahead of the game in the lock making game they may have been ahead in the flint making game as well,I canot recall the sources but at least a couple lean toward the idea that the Engish learned from the French to make the type we now use. Though people have been making cores and striking long flakes for blades for thousands of years the result would be a bit different from striking a long flake to make 3/4 flints out of I don't know what use that flake would have been ..except to make flints, some cultures may have found the spall method suitable and not proceded to a more productive method, like you said we will never know, the one thing that bothers me about the theory of limited knowledge of the French method is once someone familiar with flint saw one like we are used to it would not take the sharpest blade around to figure out how it was made
I suspect that as the French were ahead of the game in the lock making game they may have been ahead in the flint making game as well,I canot recall the sources but at least a couple lean toward the idea that the Engish learned from the French to make the type we now use. Though people have been making cores and striking long flakes for blades for thousands of years the result would be a bit different from striking a long flake to make 3/4 flints out of I don't know what use that flake would have been ..except to make flints, some cultures may have found the spall method suitable and not proceded to a more productive method, like you said we will never know, the one thing that bothers me about the theory of limited knowledge of the French method is once someone familiar with flint saw one like we are used to it would not take the sharpest blade around to figure out how it was made
curator
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Miquelette locks were good sparkers with poor quality flints. My Catalan miquelette gets at least 80 shots from a 1 1/4X 1 1/4 English musket flint. I often equip it with worn flints that had served other firearms and had become too short. My Brown Bess, 1795 & 1816 U.S. Muskets get 30 to 50 shots per flint when properly set up and lead wrapped. Occasionally a shiny spot would need to be knapped away to keep them sparking. 20 Shots per flint is a good conservative estimate if the troops are flint-lock trained.
tg said:
The buck & ball cartridge was virtually standard for the US military for the smooth musket. They used a LOT more of these just about everywhere. From 1835 to 1840 the Ordnance Dept. issued 2,700,000 buck and ball cartridges compared to 950,000 ball. This from "Firearms of the American West 1803-1865", Garivaglia and Worman. pg 109
So ordering Buck & Ball was not unusual. It was common practice. I was far more effective than "ball".
So far as being flintlock. The early percussion cap was not what we have today and it was not all that popular in some circles. The world's militaries was very slow to adopt percussion because it was unproven and caps were often not all that reliable. And production of the 1842 was not that great nor was conversion of flintlocks to percussion done at great speed. The US Army used mostly FL muskets in the Mexican War.
It is said that Melchoir Fordney never made a percussion gun at least no originals seem to have survived if he did, he was killed in 1846.
Dan
I think that Zonie's observation is a very good one. I have seen roughly the same ratio reflected in 18th century British documents although this is only for military locks. My own flintlock shooting experience is exclusively with original guns, mostly a Henry Pratt flint NE rifle made around 1810-1820 that has a fairly good Birmingham-made export quality lock. Twenty years ago, when I was shooting regularly, I was the only person in my club that shot an original rifle. All my friends who shot flintlocks had consistent problems with flint life and failure to spark. They were using what, at the time, were the best reproduction locks available and I came to the conclusion that no matter how well made they appeared, the proper balance and adjustment of the springs is critical and was simply not understood at the time by the makers of reproduction locks. My Pratt rifle always went off and flints lasted so long that I never had any idea how many shots they made...probably more than 100 or even more. I see from some of these posts that a few of the best modern makers have probably learned how to adjust flintlocks properly but its a skill that was lost and has had to relearned.
As far as military locks were concerned, by necessity these had to be as rugged and soldier-proof as possible. The sort of fine tuning appropriate to a sporting gun lock was probably unrealistic, especially if they were being repaired by regimental armourers in the field, hence the shorter projected flint life. Besides, even if they averaged twice the 20 shot average (which would be more than enough for any reasonable action) it would be prudent to make certain that their were always enough flints on hand.
As far as military locks were concerned, by necessity these had to be as rugged and soldier-proof as possible. The sort of fine tuning appropriate to a sporting gun lock was probably unrealistic, especially if they were being repaired by regimental armourers in the field, hence the shorter projected flint life. Besides, even if they averaged twice the 20 shot average (which would be more than enough for any reasonable action) it would be prudent to make certain that their were always enough flints on hand.
