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Originally Posted by Raf
Hi I thought you might be interested .Maybe this image makes it clearer. This arrangement seems to be transitional between earlier snaphaunces with interlocked horizontally moving sears and flintlocks / snapaunces with vertically moving sears . I haven't seen it illustrated before and may be uniquely Italian. It seems surprising to find it on a late seventeenth century gun but this antiquated style of lock with its external buffer continued to be made in the early eighteenth century.
On full cock the secondary sear D slips under the tail of the primary sear C at E locking it into the tumbler notch B. On release the force of the mainspring drives the sear out of engagement. The V spring controls the movement of both the primary and secondary sears.
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This arrangement of primary and secondary sears controlled by a single V spring can be seen on many wheellocks as well, albeit working horizontally. Blackmore's
Guns and Rifles of the World has a diagram of this system as found on Silesian wheellocks with external springs (so-called
Tschinkes, pp 112-13. The same essential construction is also found on the central Italian or "Roman" version of the miquelet lock. However, it is not confined to Italy, as it was also used, likewise operating horizontally, in the so-called
agujeta snap-locks of Castile and Cataluņa, and achieving greater popularity later in North Africa (particularly Algeria) down to the 19th cent.
The longevity of the snaphaunce "alla fiorentina" in Italy is perhaps explained by the experiences of a friend who has shot these, he says the lock time is respectably fast despite the rather Rube-Goldbergish nature of the separate frizzen and sliding pancover. Apparently, elegant conservatism has its appeal, witness the reluctance of many in the German-speaking lands to give up wheellocks despite their expense, complexity, and demands for rigorous cleaning and maintenance.