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A touch hole, also known as a cannon vent, is a small hole at the rear (breech) portion of the barrel of a muzzleloading gun or cannon. The hole provides external access of an ignition spark into the breech chamber of the barrel (where the combustion of the propellant occurs), either with a slow match (matchlock), a linstock or a flash pan ...
A matchlock or firelock[1] is a historical type of firearm wherein the gunpowder is ignited by a burning piece of flammable cord or twine that is in contact with the gunpowder through a mechanism that the musketeer activates by pulling a lever or trigger with their finger. This firing mechanism was an improvement over the hand cannon, which ...
The Belton flintlock was a repeating flintlock design using superposed loads, conceived by Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, resident Joseph Belton some time prior to 1777. The musket design was offered by Belton to the newly formed Continental Congress in 1777. Belton wrote that the musket could fire eight rounds with one loading, [1] and that he ...
Flintlock. Flintlock of an 18th-century hunting rifle, with flint missing. Flintlock is a general term for any firearm that uses a flint -striking ignition mechanism, the first of which appeared in Western Europe in the early 16th century. The term may also apply to a particular form of the mechanism itself, also known as the true flintlock ...
A flintlock pistol made by Ketland Sparks generated by a flintlock mechanism. The flintlock mechanism is a type of lock used on muskets, rifles, and pistols from the early 17th to the mid-19th century. It is commonly referred to as a "flintlock" (without the word mechanism). The term is also used for the weapons themselves as a whole, and not ...
Frizzen. The frizzen, historically called the "hammer" or the steel, [1][2] is an L-shaped piece of steel hinged at the front used in flintlock firearms. The frizzen is held in one of two positions, opened or closed, by a leaf spring. When closed, it is positioned over the flash pan so as to enclose a small priming charge of black powder next ...
Like the earlier snaplock and later flintlock, the snaphance drives flint onto steel to create a shower of sparks to ignite the priming powder in the pan, the flash partly passing through the touch hole into the barrel where it ignites the main charge (propellant). The flint is held in a clamp at the end of a bent lever called the cock.
Under Dearborn's direction, the war department issued an order for the new rifle on May 25, 1803. Joseph Perkin, superintendent of the recently created Harper's Ferry Armory, was placed in charge of the design of the new rifle. Perkin and several other armorers created several patterns from Dearborn's instructions, and in November 1803 these ...