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Old 28th February 2014, 08:01 PM   #13
Raf
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Numbers 1 to 4 would I think have to be classified as flintlocks since , as in Evigneys lock an extension to the base of the steel is used to keep powder in the pan. Therefore pancover and steel are combined which has to be the basic definition of a flintlock. Number 5 is an early snaphaunce because the steel and pancover are separate. The pancover is a wheelock type sliding pancover which is opened by a plunger attached to the cock operating on the pancover link arm. As in a conventional snaphaunce only in this instance the linking mechanism is external.
Lenk seems to have regarded the flintlock as a distinct invention therefore does not classify these early locks as flintlocks. However I think a modern view would be that the classic flintlock was an evolutionary development which occurred as a result of a simplification or compromise between the variety of solutions to the snapping lock problem that had developed by the early seventeenth century.

Last edited by Raf; 1st March 2014 at 08:45 AM.
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