Flintlocks

[Delingpole]

Hello Tharg, hello members of the 2000AD online community.
I'm 42, have been reading 2000AD since I was 12, I am a loyal subscriber, my wife and kids all read and love 2000AD. So this criticism comes from the heart and is intended to be helpful:

There are now 3 stories (Defoe, Red Seas, Nikolai Dante) which regularly feature flintlock muskets or variations of, and none of the artists are getting the mechanism quite right.

As a Napoleonic re-enactor I'm regularly firing a Brown Bess and it's French counterpart, the Charleville. The most common mistake the artists seem to make is in the flint itself. It is either completely absent (see attached Defoe cover of prog. 1640 where Damned(?) frizen is open and he has no flint in the jaws) or is a shapeless blob deep within the jaws of the hammer as appeared in a recent Red Seas.



I don't suppose it makes much difference to most readers but I'm sure the artists would like to get it right, and are presumably working from web images from museums which would not necessarily display guns with flints in.

I've put a short video on Youtube to show how the mechanism actually works.
I've also got some still pictures to show the three positions the hammer can be in relation to the frizzen, but I've got nowhere to upload them to except Facebooks so I don't know how to link them.

This is the You tube link. And yes, the flint falls out. But I couldn't be bothered to get my 11 year old daughter to re-film it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXpLk6ihflo

Hope this helps. Keep up the good work.

Richard Delingpole
Worcester

[Richmond Clements]

Excellent first post!
Welcome to the board!

[Minkyboy]

Wotcha.

This is exactly the kind of anorak wearing, nit picking, attention to detail and pedantry which will make you friends quickly round these parts.

Welcome.

P.S. I hope the kids were skipping over Cradlegrave!

[Colin YNWA]

Not just the post but the video added as well. Like it when you don't just come up with a problem but provide the solution as well.

Hang around its fun here, even if most of us don't have guns (I hope at least!)

[TordelBack]

Delingpole, why fight it.  It's obvious you belong here, with us. Forever.

And if you make us all feel a little less insecure about our own painful obsessions and their pedantic expression on this board, so much the better.  Welcome, but don't get me started on the nautical disaster that is Red Seas.  When the captain can't tell a sheet from a sail....

[Bouwel]

Hello and welcome!

-Bouwel-

(Speciality: Errors in manned spaceflight)

[Dark Jimbo]

What a fabulous first post.

[Trout]

Nice bit of very admirable pedantry! Good for you.

Also, your punctuation is quite good, so you are safe from my apostrophe obession and terrible fishy wrath.

Welcome!

- Trout

[Emperor]

What a fabulous first post.

Indeed. A possible contender for the Best First Post Prize. Anyone wanting to beat it is going to have to pull something special out of the bag (and probably post it in the "show us your undies" thread).

Although it is worth pointing out that Defoe contains anachronistic technologies, mad sciences and wild magicks, so has an awful lot of wiggle room in these matters.

[TordelBack]

...so has an awful lot of wiggle room in these matters.

I think invisible flints are more in the bodyswerve line. 

[Grae the puppetmaker]

What a fabulous first post.

Although it is worth pointing out that Defoe contains anachronistic technologies, mad sciences and wild magicks, so has an awful lot of wiggle room in these matters.

And also that Nikolai Dante is set in the 27th century, so while the weaponry may look like flintlocks, this is more of a stylistic conceit than an accurate representation of the technology.

Great video though, an excellent demo of how the firing mechanism of a flintlock actually works.

[Emperor]

...so has an awful lot of wiggle room in these matters.

I think invisible flints are more in the bodyswerve line.

Well yes it is a cop out Unless they are those new aetherial flints I've been hearing so much about. 

[Mike Gloady]

This is exactly the kind of anorak wearing, nit picking, attention to detail and pedantry which will make you friends quickly round these parts.

Minkyboy's right.

And speaking of anoraks and nits, Nikolai Dante's probably not using a flintlock, although it DOES look a lot like it.  So I reckon we can let Fraser & Burns off. 

Well done sir. 

[TordelBack]

Nikolai Dante's probably not using a flintlock, although it DOES look a lot like it.

This is true.  But without Mr. Delingpole to draw our attention to this issue, we might not have considered the matter any further.  And then where would we be.  That's just one of the many things that pedantry can contribute to a forum such as this.

[eggonlegs]

nerdery at its finest
welcome to the greatest web site in the galaxy