Tinkering with my Traditions Lock

[exMember]

After shooting Bucks custom GRRW flintlock and seeing how well it did with 6 grains 4fg Goex, I decided to hog out the pan on my Traditions Mountain Rifle flintlock. I first tried 3 grains and it was slow. Upped it to 6 grains and boom! Extremely fast ignition and out of 10 shots, not one had a flash in the pan.

The factory set up worked fine with a touch over 3 grains, but some times it would go into the touch hole because the bottom of the pan was almost level. It would give me some flash in the pans as well at times.

I still have some polishing to do once I get some stones, but right now, I am extremely happy!

I haven't shot the rifle a lot since I built it, but I did note a little leak between the barrel and lock. I epoxied in a piece of brass shim stock ( used for shimming engine bearings ) and today, the lock mortise was spotless except for some polishing grease I currently am testing inside of the lock.

Super happy! I even took one shot, decided I need a lot more time to heal up before doing that again lol.  Not bad though! Just a little discomfort in the muscles during recoil.

 

[wganz]

I'm guessing that the 3rd and 4th pix are the before & after of the "hog out the pan" procedure?

 

[Hilljack1]

The way the pan looks is like the English locks (Late English, Manton)…Cratex bits work real well for polishing the pan....Now your pan with the 6 grains places the vent in direct line of the radiant heat wave which makes for very fast consistent ignition....

hilljack

 

[exMember]

Both pictures are after pics, just different view.

 

[wganz]

Any before pix so I can get an idea of how much was removed?

 

[exMember]

No but I can take some of my other rifle that it very similar.

 

[earlbz]

What tool(s) did you use to hog out the pan? Tell me more about the flash hole liner - is it a brand or did you enlarge the hole yourself? Thanks, Earl

 

[exMember]

The flash hole liner is factory, I just drilled it out with a 1/16" drill bit. The touch hole was drilled with a metric bit at the factory and so, I was ended up removing just the tiniest amount, they had it very close to 1/16".

Dremel diamond grinding burr bit did an excellent job and removed the metal clean and quickly. I used a similar bit as shown on the far left.