Thursday, September 20, 2012

Never even HEARD of this...

Before the week.  And I am sort of flabbergasted that I haven't.  This sort of subject should be right in my wheelhouse, but no.

Snaphance.

What is that?!



Matchlock, Wheel-lock, Flintlock...  All these trip easily to mind and roll off my tongue.  But the snaphance is totally unknown to me.  It's a slightly different operating system for musketry before the flintlock became popular and solved some problems with the advent of a frizzen as a better sparker/pan-cover.

Frizzen.  I knew that one...


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2 comments:

  1. GeodkytSeptember 20, 2012 at 10:46 AM

    weirdly enough, the use of the word "hammer" for the part holding the flint comes from after percussion guns were common. Before then, they didn't call it a hammer nor was the steel part it struck called the "frizzen".

    The flint was held by the jaws of the "cock" and the part it struck was called either the "steel" or (confusingly enough to modern readers) the "hammer".

    ReplyDelete
  2. HlynkaCGSeptember 24, 2012 at 3:35 PM

    Watching Pawn-Stars?

    ReplyDelete

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