Congratulations, Getting everything to work the first time on a project of that size is quite a feat!

Well done Steve!

Russell

VERY cool Steve. This will be excellent. Good job.

Brion

Steve

This is outstanding work! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.

Thanks for keeping us updated on your project. I am excited to see how this one turns out.

That's impressive, Steve. WELL DONE!

Thanks for sharing.

Gary

Congratulations Steve! I would call you a "self motivated high achiever". Not many people, if any, can say they've done what you have now done.

Thanks for all of the compliments guys!!

A flint-lock is a tremendously complicated device. Having this lock work perfectly on the first try is almost as big of a accomplishment for me as making the damascus barrel. Yesterday was a good day in my shop!

I have seen several damascus locks, not that common, most all locks are color case hardened. I am curious tho, from watching the video I have 2 questions. First did you style this after a siler flintlock kit? Second what damascus pattern?

First did you style this after a siler flintlock kit? Second what damascus pattern?

Hi Ed,

I would love to see some pictures of other damascus locks. Can you tell me where I can find them? I haven't been around the custom gun building field very long, so I know there is a lot of stuff out there that I haven't seen yet.

This lock isn't patterned off of any other lock. I haven't found another lock that I was satisfied with. I have a Siler.... it disappoints me; though Siler locks are among the easiest to improve to work well. I also have a Pedersoli flint-lock pistol kit. I've never put the kit together because the lock is so bad. If the Pedersoli lock ever fired, it would just be a happy accident.

I designed my lock using software on my computer. I can draw all of the parts and then articulate them on the screen to see how they interact. My knowledge of how to design a lock comes from my experiences working on them as a gunsmith and also what I have heard other gunsmiths say makes a flint-lock work well. I also have measurements from a bunch of old locks that were recorded by a firearms researcher from Germany.

My lock is about the same size as a small Siler lock. The mainspring and sear springs that I used are sold for use in the small Siler. I had to heat the tip of the mainspring and reshape it to work with my tumbler. Also had to modify the sear spring. I made my frizzen spring out of damascus. It is entirely different than the Siler.

The damascus pattern in the lock plate is the same as I used for the blade that will go on this piece. It is W-pattern, that has been pressed with West Texas Wind dies. The other parts of the lock are a variety of patterns. These lock parts are a bit different than what we are used to with a knife blade. On a blade, you mainly just have the sides of the blade to be concerned with. What little pattern is displayed on the spine typically isn't considered. These lock parts are larger and have multiple surfaces that should each have some sort of interesting pattern. So, I tried to create something different for each part. Not sure I accomplished all that I hoped for, but at least it is obvious that the parts are made of damascus.

That is very cool Steve!

The most I have ever seen is the lock plate done in damascus, I should have also mentioned that in my first post. All that was done was strip the lock and use it as a template to drill/tap. I did see one very high end art gun that was made with damascus, that one was over 10 years ago.

Considering that practically every lock plate out there is color case hardened, which runs very shallow, I see no reason why modern damascus would not be a viable candidate for this task. I for one would like to see more like this. Historically lock plates were brazed, silver soldered and hacked together, often on the inside they were a mess but on the outside they looked quite good. Many that I know likes to see the engravings and the builders info on the lock. Think it was 2 club meets ago we were discussing this very topic. Keep in mind that the purist likely will frown on it grossly, as they also frowned on the plated/blued/park screws that are used as well, oh I also got slammed for not browning the pins on my Kentucky flintlock. Just about everyone was testing the weight of the main spring and the frizen spring. I also have seen/heard of blister steel, wootz and other damascus type materials used for various trim, not to mention some heavy high end engravings.

When I first saw this thread I was going to offer to send you some locks to use but I realized you were well beyond that stage in the game. On the mainspring, did you change the weight? I am not sure if you are aware but the force pounds on that spring along with the seer can vastly improve the speed and performance of the lock greatly. The next club meet is first of the year and I will bring it up there and see what happens. I grossly suspect I will see a ton of misconceptions about damascus due to this being the prime target of the flawed damascus barrels in the past. Little do most of them know how damascus has changed over the years.

What Pedersoli pistol do were you referring to? I have found on their flintlocks it's more a problem with the patent breech than with the lock, granted that just about all locks can be tweaked greatly. My latest build it took some getting use to the breech pattern to get a good feel for how it really operated. One previous build I was doing I found a design flaw on the lock and channel track and I had submitted the info to the company, Pedersoli, they were quite good to work with on that and the end results was a design change to fix the problem.

I am not sure if this would help your build or not but I have recently taken some decent photo's of my flintlock under some rather abusive conditions for performance testing, At least it should be helpful in pointing out some gotcha areas of the lock.

Over all I would have to greatly applaud your work in this area and I hope it inspires others.

Ed

Thanks for the compliment Pete!

Ed,

I'm not too concerned about what the purists will think of this piece. It is a piece of art. I would hope that they can realize that I am fully capable of making it with traditional finishes.

I did lighten the weight of the mainspring slightly. It was too heavy as installed. I think the lock is plenty fast as I have it now. Not too concerned about it being "high performance". This piece won't be used for target shooting.

Yet to be seen is how efficiently the charge in the barrel will be set off. I still have to make the breech plug and assemble the piece for testing. My barrel walls are thicker than what was typical on old guns, so may have to play with the flash hole.

You may hear some doubts about the damascus barrel. EVERONE has heard that damascus barrels are unsafe. Interesting history about that though. It is totally untrue that damascus barrels are unsafe to shoot. Tens of thousands of damascus shotgun barrels were proofed to fire smokeless powders. Still today, there are thousands of shooters using 100 year old guns with damascus barrels and firing them with properly loaded smokeless shells.

Back around the early 1900's and at the time when smokeless powers were introduced, the vast majority of damascus barrels were being made in Belgium. The Belgians were the absolute masters at the damascus barrel craft. Virtually all of the gun makers were buying barrels from the Belgians. Of the American gun makers, there is no evidence that any of them ever made their own damascus barrels. During this same time period, the political climate with Belgium had deteriorated, plus the American Congress had imposed import tariffs on gun barrels. Too, the gun manufacturers had all developed processes for making steel barrels. Not wanting to continue buying barrels from the Belgians, the gun manufacturers had to find a way to make customers stop asking for the beautiful damascus barrels. So, they started a smear campaign against damascus barrels, saying that they were unsafe with smokeless loads. They were so effective with this lie that the perception still exists.

I got the final construction work done on the lock today. I'll etch and finish it just before I assemble the completed project.

Very cool Steve. Thanks for the close ups pics of your lock, it helps show what is involved with what you are doing. That is an interesting bit of history you provided about the Damascus gun barrels.

Brian