One of the reasons many people on the frontier continued to use flintlocks well into the percussion period was they were much more reliable*.. And I have found the same to be true. If a flintlock fails to fire the shooter did some basic thing wrong. Percussion guns with hard to reach narrow convoluted fire channels have a mind of their own and seem to get stubborn at just the wrong time. Cleaning is a snap too. Three or four patches wet with Windex, dry and grease. Pipe cleaner through touchhole. Finished.
*Ruxton, "Life in the Far West", 1847
(Member NMLRA since 1957)
That has not been the case for me, Joe. Not saying that flintlocks are less reliable, heck no, they are deadly reliable when properly set up. But, so is a caplock when properly built. I learned that all drums and nipples are not created equal. Not even close. When I built rifles I gave very close attention to the breech/drum/nipple area. I have even seen the time that changing out a burnt out nipple would turn an occasionally misfiring rifle into one that would be 100% reliable, and turn it from a poor shooting gun to a match winner again.
I have shot thousands of rounds in competition without a single misfire. In fact, if I ever did have one, it was not the fault of the gun, but, as you said, I did something wrong in cleaning, loading, etc.
I will bet anybody, that will put up the money, $10,000 that I can load any one of my rifles (or shotgun) and have it fire perfectly the first time, after having sat for years with RIG in the barrel and breech area. That'd be easy money. I don't mean to sound bragadocious, it is simply the knowledge of how the ignition area of a caplock should be designed and how to clean and load it right.
SRH
