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nice slow-mo flintlock video

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tom duffy

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Check it out.
[url] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLLHXwoClyo[/url]
 
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That was posted here a while ago. A good example of how a flintlock works. Unfortuneatly, its also a good example of a pretty slow lock.

I have an Ohio rifle with a Chambers Classic Ketland lock. The gun goes boom as soon as the flint hits the frizzen.
 
That is a terribly timed lock, with the flint hitting the frizzen too high, at the wrong angle, and the sparks produced merely rolling down the frizzen face to the pan. If the shooter thinks this is a fast lock, boy, has he got something to learn! A properly tuned lock will slice bits of steel from the frizzen and throw them, literally, into the pan in one stroke. Assuming the touch hole is located appropriately above the pan, and is the correct diameter, and a vent pick has been run through the touch hole to clear a hole in the main powder charge, the ignition of both the priming powder and the gun show occur as the cock is finishing its stroke. kBOOM! Not, clatch-hsssSSBOOM!

I worry about our German friends.

Paul
 
They had that movie posted years ago. Most of their stuff is of modern arms. I kept hoping they would get a decent lock to film with their cool cameras, but I guess they haven't. May be a certain disdain of "old fashioned" stuff going on there.

Brings to mind a video of a steam locomotive done by a team that normally filmed airplanes. The narrator couldn't resist chuckling in his beer about the locomotive going only 40 miles an hour. Those guys would find a whole new definition of thrill ride if they rode the cab of a steam locomotive pulling a crack passenger train in the early 20th century. Likewise our German friends with the cool cameras would do something useful by filming good quality flint locks. Somebody should cross their palms with Euros and get some good movies.
 
Hi Paul,
At the Bowling Green seminar in the late '80s, Gary Brumfield showed a high speed video of an original lock firing (4000fps). The pan was literally coated with sparks. It was as if the a paint roller rolled over the pan from front to back. He showed a number of locks firing, but that one stood out in my mind. None, however, ignited the pan until after the cock had finished it's movement.

In a large Siler that has been my work horse for years, I used infrared gates and could establish that roughly the 4/10 of the locks total time was mechanical. The final 6/10 of the total time occured after the cock was finished moving and sparks were in the pan. This final part of the time is dependant on the ignition properties of the pan powder used, in my case ffffg Goex. I dug out my copy and the following are the break down of the time segments I measured:

sear strike to cock movement -----.0019 sec.
sear strike to frizzen movement ----.0094
Total mechanical movement --------.0151
Total ignition time --------------------.0388

Roughly then, mechanical time on this large Siler was 39% of the total. The remaining time for the pan to ignite is 61%.

One can calculate from the 4 measurements above the percentages of time for segments of the total:

Sear time ------------------------5%
Cock to frizzen------------------19%
Frizzen to end movement ----15%
Powder burn time --------------61%

This information from:
Journal of Historical Armsmaking Technology
Volume IV, January 1991.

Best regards,
Larry Pletcher
 
Java Man said:
A good example of how a flintlock works. Unfortuneatly, its also a good example of a pretty slow lock.

Maybe it's slow because the flint is lead wrapped... :rotf:

I know it's leather wrapped, I just couldn't help myself... :redface: :haha:
 
Just for completeness, it should also be observed that the cock stops way too high, and that this lock provides a classic example of a rebounding frizzen - note the chips coming off after the frizzen hits the flint. The first compounds the second as the frizzen crushes the edge of the flint; I doubt the flint would last more than 1 or 2 strikes.

Joel
 
I think this guy did the flintlock for fun. His main stuff is modern time study - many of which are more recent firearms.

His web site has has other really cool stuff. If you click on the gun photo half way down you will get the idea. Also there are a number of other high speed links.

I agree with someone above that we need this kind of work with today's flintlocks to really see what is happening.

Regards,
Pletch
 
Agreed, Pletch. Just thinking out loud, wouldn't it be great if the NMLRA could get someone to Friendship with a slo-mo outfit to film flinters being fired? Sell the videos to the owners, let the NMLRA have a piece of the action, and keep copies of some of the clips for the organization's research and education purposes.
 
trent/OH said:
Agreed, Pletch. Just thinking out loud, wouldn't it be great if the NMLRA could get someone to Friendship with a slo-mo outfit to film flinters being fired? Sell the videos to the owners, let the NMLRA have a piece of the action, and keep copies of some of the clips for the organization's research and education purposes.

Talk about fun - I'd volunteer to help run it! There are so many experiments and so much to learn.
Regards,
Pletch
 
I'm no expert, but I do enough video work to know a trick shot when I see it. Most modern video cameras run at a constant 30 frames per second, too slow for the flintlock video we see at[url] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLLHXwoClyo[/url]

30 frames per second means your camcorder takes a picture every 33 milliseconds, okay for household use but too long for most firearms applications.

The camera must have a very high frame rate, which in turn reduces the light exposure time, which mandates fast film, which reduces quality, so we increase the film size to maintain resolution, so now we're into a specialty camera...well, you get the idea. It get expensive.

I haven't checked the newest camcorders -- it's possible so newer handycams may have frame rates above 30 fps, but it would most likely be on a professional grade camera. It may be possible to use a really fast strobe to simulate it, but that won't be the same as a real HS Camera.

Here's bullets passing through household items (fruit, drinks, playing cards) ->Link
 
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