法國M1777燧發手槍

Hello and welcome here to the penultimate day of the year of 2021 What I have here is my Army San Marco 1777 French Cavalry Pistol Which I have not yet fired I did some extensive rebuilding because the lockwork was so-so And some of the parts actually had no relation to the original So what I did was I ordered some parts from the rifle shop in the US And worked on that So it's got a new frizen, new frizen spring And a couple of internal parts as well that have been redone So it was a learning experience But it seems to work, at least the lock sparks I don't know whether anything will actually go off So what I have here in this very fetching ashtray Are some reproduction cartridges of the time So these have a woefully undersized ball This is 0.64 inch ball And it is, as I show you here Just in relation how much windage there is there Balls in and out, no problem So of course it's paper patched And there's a nice belt hook here Very fetching Yes, so the cartridges are loaded with 2.5 grams of powder The original load was 3 grams Of course that would include a priming load Of course here on ranges we're not allowed to do that anymore So I'll be priming from a separate pan So I've downloaded the charge as appropriate So we're going to start here at 10 meters Which is sort of the sensible use range of these pistols Of course you'd be charging in with your bladed weapon in your right hand And pistol should you need it would be in your left hand Or you'd be holding the reins So 10 meters is probably the sensible range for this If I manage to hit anything I will take it back slowly until 25 I've only got 10 cartridges So we'll see how we go Now what's interesting to note with this Is that the barrel is extremely conical So if you aim along the Well there isn't a flat But if you aim along the top of the barrel You are in fact pointing upwards So legend has it with these That if I do shoot at 25 I'm going to have to aim about a meter below the target Which is the ground immediately below So we'll see how it goes So I'll stop here I'm having misfire after misfire off camera The first couple went fine And then it's just not working I've changed the flints Everything, nothing's working So I'll have to re-harden it And see if I can get it reliable And try again Still, here's the target Four shots fired Three on the target Pretty widely spaced apart To be expected So I wouldn't have taken it back to 25 anyway Anyway, I hope you like this little short try-out session