Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Flintlock!

I don't think I've ever talked about guns on here before other than tangentially when I refer to hunting.
I've been around guns pretty much my whole life. In Maine its super easy to own a gun if you don't have a criminal record. In Massachusetts not so much, its actually not all that hard but I've never bothered to get a gun license since I could always go to Maine.
Well last year I realized 2 important facts:
#1. Because I' m a Mass resident my hunting license here is cheap and if I get an antlerless deer permit (I haven't) I could potentially shoot two deer here.
#2. In Mass if the gun loads from the front its not a firearm and therefore doesn't require a license.

So near the end of last year I bought myself a muzzle loading shotgun. Its been pretty fun, took me awhile to get used to loading but I carried it during turkey season with no problems other than my inability to find any turkeys.



I'll write more about it later. I took it to camp with us for 4th of July and forgot it there so its time to turn my attention to something more rifley:


The barrel is marked "T. Mansfield INC .450 CAL" with no other marks that I can find. Its a flintlock which makes shooting it a little more interesting but it shoots pretty well. Dad and I fired it a bunch right after Thanksgiving but I hadn't brought it home until the end of May.

This week I decided to pull it out and install a new flint:

The one on it is pooched, I could possibly sharpen it and get a few more shots but flints are like $2 each.


I didn't know exactly what to order, the one in the foreground is what came on the rifle, the middle is 3/4"x3/4", the rear one is 3/4"x7/8". In testing the one in the rear is really too big it doesn't fit into the lock hardly at all its so tall. The one in the middle fits the lock well but its really too short. As an experiment I installed it "upside down" which is to say with the beveled edge facing down and it sparked way better than it did the other way. Upside down the leading edge strikes the frizzen much higher which is why it sparks better.

Since I left much of my blackpowder gear at camp I haven't been doing any shooting but now that I know I've got a working flint I'll try to get out to the range.

No comments: