Diary of the Tipi 11 Care for a Smoothbore Flintlock.wmv

Description

http://www.thepathfinderschoolllc.com

https://www.facebook.com/nativedesignz

Tags: Pathfinder,Survival,Bushcraft,Primitive,Archery,Blackpowder

Video Transcription

back in the woods afternoon guys Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school back to the diary and teepee I've got a little rain going on right now in Southeast Ohio I've had quite a few people ask me about what you do with this teepee in the rain well it's pretty simple you close the flaps over on the top you just cross the flat poles and that closes it up you've got a little bit of a hole to do that some water that drains down the inside of the poles but for the most part it runs down through the liner goes to the outside that's the reason the fire pits a little bit off-center in a teepee and so that water it does come straight down through doesn't go into your fire pit so you keep your fire putting your wood pile off-center a little bit and you're good to go okay guys so what I want to do today was I wanted to do some routine maintenance on this flintlock any flintlock is the same it's easier to manipulate this pistol on camera then it would be a rifle or a musket so I figured we use this pistol for example really all we need to maintain this thing is we need some hot water soapy water would be great but you don't want to use life soap and any other kind of soap would not be really period proper or wouldn't really be of the period so I'm not going to use any kind of a dawn dish liquid or anything like that which would be preferable if you're going to clean one at your house maintenance kit very simple we made a turn screw we made a pan brush we made a vent pick the pan brush and a vent pick really our field maintenance for things that you were while you're shooting a gun to clean out the touch hole and to brush you know any residue out of the pan and things like that

those are four on the fly the turn screw is for taking the lock mechanism apart and changing the flint we're going to take the lock mechanism apart here in a second what I keep in my kit I just have a small bag here and it's got a piece of steel wool in it that I used to scrub any bits of surface rust or anything like that off and to clean my frizzen I do have some patching material in here that I used to wipe it down with I've got again a makeshift bore snake with just a tee toggle on it and some Bank line I have my turn screw that we created in the last video and then beyond that what I really have in here is a mainspring vise which is something that I bought I did not make

and it basically compresses the mainspring so that you can't service your prison we're not going to go into that too much today that's not routine maintenance that's more along the lines of you know extensive time maintenance and we're not gonna worry about that and then I've got a can of fixing wax in here again I use this stuff for everything but I use it really a lot on wood furniture and things like that as well as mechanisms that's how I grease things so what we need to do to maintain this is first of all we want to remove the lock from this gun and to do that we just get our turn screw that we made and we take the two side screws out of the lock on the back side of the lock plate so we'll do that real fast when we move this camera down so you guys can see what I'm doing okay and I've got a blanket sitting over here that I'm gonna put these parts on so they're not in the dirt on the bottom of this teepee there's one screw and there's another one just like it on the other side that'll have to come off you can see the locks trying to fall out so let's put that screw in a bind there we go okay now we can just pull that lock right out okay and now we have an empty dirty old pistol here with a trigger in it all right the trigger mechanism you can see is very very simplistic in this thing all it does is pull a bar straight up and down for the most part and that bar activates this lever which is spring cocked the fire is a mechanism these things are very very simplistic like they're built on flint and steel technology your Flint sear your Steel's here if there's a spark into the pan the pan travels through the touch hole is in the side of the barrel here we made that vent pick for and it fires the gun so the first thing we want to do is we want to maintain the the gun itself so we've got a lot of fouling and residue right here to get off and I've got a piece of steel wool here that's got a little bit of fix and wax on it and I'll just scrub all of that out of there real good I am going to go ahead and put my spectacles on for this so I can see real well what I'm doing and I just scrub all that residue off of there and I'll scrub it off the wood as well and we don't mind using that steel wood steel wool on the wood either because it's not a big deal I'm gonna dress that would anyway when I'm done then I'm just gonna scrub the barrel up a little bit with it just like this okay now that I've got most of the corrosion dirtiness out of there now all I really need to do is I need to plug that vent hole because we're just going to dump hot water down this barrel flush it so what I'm gonna do to do that is I'm just going to use a bird feather I've got a feather from one of my birds right here and I'm just going to shove it in that vent hole just like that and fill this barrel with hot water that I've got in this kettle I'm gonna do this over my fire pit that's not burning right now

not going to hurry thinking a little water in there and I'm just gonna fill that barrel up to the top you can see the liquid in there and as long as that holes plugged up it's not gonna leak and now I'm just gonna let that hot water sit in there for a few minutes loosen up that grime so I'm gonna set that right over here against this pole right there you can see sitting there just mess up just a little bit

I just set it right there straight up and down loosen up the grime in that barrel let's sit there for a little while and I'll maintain my lock now while I'm waiting on that so now coming to my lock what I'm gonna do is I'm going to open up the cock as it's called make sure that my Flint's in there nice and tight and feels like it is and I'm gonna clean this pan out real good and again to do that I'm just gonna take some of this steel wool and I'm gonna scrub it out real good with that steel wool to get that powder residue out of it and just get any fouling it's in there off and I'm greasing it a little bit at the same time because there is a little bit of grease on this steel wool I'll scrub my trigger or my frizzen as it's called real well the face of it just like that and I just want to scrub that pan out real real good and get the residue out of it knock any surface rust that might be on there off then I'll scrub the lock plate and all of that stuff as well the bottom of the pan the mainspring the cock and then I proceeded to wipe this thing down with a rag that has some fix and wax and pronated into it because it's been soaking around fixing wax so long it's just got a lot of it in there and I mean she's not too dressed the metal with to protect it from rusting Griese the mechanism real good and you can use vegetable oil I don't like to use oils petroleum-based type oils on this stuff or my knives I like to use vegetable oil I don't recommend some oils because they will turn rancid over time the vegetable oil works pretty good and fixing wax works really good ok that's pretty clean pretty simple maintenance on these guys I mean there's really nothing to it the biggest pain in the neck of the whole thing is scrubbing all that grime out of these barrels because black powders got so much filth in it ok so what we'll do is we'll dump this out in the fire pit let you guys see how every that is what comes out of there it's gonna have a lot of black in it then we're gonna do the same thing again we're gonna fill it right back up with water hot water and let it sit for a minute again and put it right back in the rest their position that makes the perfect little rest for that pistol and sit there and soak and let that go for a few minutes and then want to eat out again okay guys now that I've drained out a second time I'm actually going to turn it upside down on this fire brick set it right back in that cradle again and let that barrel drain for a minute before I start running patches down there okay well then we don't have to drain generally I'll take the ramrod out and I'll go ahead and dress it with some fixing wax and just use a rag to wipe it down and that's just to protect that piece of wood and I'll take one of my piece of steel wool and dress the end of my ramrod a little bit okay guys now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the end of my bore snake here and I'm gonna put a piece of steel wall in it when it is not saturated with crap already and I'm just gonna put it on there just like this shove it down the barrel and use my ramrod to push it down all the way and then I'll pull it back out and I'll do that three or four different times

once I'm done with that I'll grab a piece of this stuff that does have some grease on it and if I don't think it's got enough I'll add some to it and I'll shove down I shove that down to bore a couple times now this is no different than maintaining any other gun and you have to maintain the bore it's just a little bit more of a pain with a pistol usually with a musket you'll have something with that musket like a cleaning jag on the end of that ramrod that makes it easy to put passing and things down the barrel without losing it with this kind of a ramrod you really don't have that luxury so you use the string then I'll go to patches once I get to that point then I'm going to start looking at using patching the exact same way I'll get a large piece of patch and I'll roll it into a circle I'll put it in that noose tighten it down water in half and ram it down the barrel all the way to the bottom pull it out just like that and this has got grease on it and I'll do that several times and that's really going to get this bore smooth up it'll make it easier for balls to go down this barrel as well because you're kind of greasing the inside this bowl right now inside this barrel with this grease piece of patching then I'll add a little bit of fixing wax to that piece of patch the last couple times I go down there then I'll use that same patch that I've greased up

to go ahead and wipe my wood furniture down with not going to hurt anything before I put my lock mechanism back on and I'll save that and use that for patching for round balls definitely not going to get rid of that okay now we can replace our ramrod just like that we can set our lock back in place now what I generally do is just again a little bit of fixing wax on these threads and on that screw and I'll hand start them just to make sure everything's lined up same thing with the other one a little pick some wax on the threads make sure it's lined up and I like to tighten these down I don't tighten one all the way down before I snug the other one up that's just good practice to make sure my lock lays in there nice and straight okay

pretty good shake function check good to go ready to rock okay guys well I appreciate you joining me for the diary of TP we've got our maintenance kit put back in here to go on our shooting bag and we've tested our flintlock pistol for function it's ready to rock and roll with us all maintained as usual I appreciate you guys joining me for another video I appreciate your views I appreciate your support I appreciate what you do for me for my family and for my business I thank you very much I'll be back the other video as soon as I can you