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Old 28th July 2020, 01:05 AM   #15
Philip
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fernando K
Hello

Finally, when I said that the shape of the plate is down, it is determined because it takes less place when making the wooden frame,

Affectionately
Thanks for the images and your very interesting comment.

Regarding wood removal for a smaller lock recess in the side of the stock: the deep internal channels for the sear spring and arms would be the same, either way, but you do have a valid point as regarding the peripheral inletting for the lock plate. The French style plate which we both posted examples of does cover a greater area, and requires removal of more wood (to the depth of a few millimeters. since only the thickness of the plate is accommodated here).

However, don't you think that the removal of less wood on the Portuguese stocks is not so much due to the downward bend in the lockplate tail, but to the GENERAL SHAPE OF THE ENTIRE PLATE, which is essentially the "wasp waisted" or "hourglass" form of the Ripoll-style Spanish miquelet lockplate, which as Lavin and Neal state also became a characteristic of later "provincial" style Spanish gunmaking? What I mean is the middle part of the plate narrows and is quite "skinny". Furthermore, the reversed position of the frizzen spring means that the front end of the lockplate is shorter, requiring less wood to be removed to fit the lock.

After all, whether a tail was straight or tilted, wouldn't the same amount of wood be covered by it? (Disregarding the outline of the rest of the lockplate)

Considering the rather conservative aesthetic seen in much of later Portuguese gunmaking (as in the shape of cock jaws which I mentioned earlier) it is perhaps no wonder why the Ripoll-style lockplate shape (modified with downward tail) was so popular even on high-class Portuguese sporting guns for the royal court, until the 19th cent. Contrast that with most of the guns made by Spain's royal smiths of the same time period, with such a heavy French influence that even on patilla-lock fowling pieces, the old-style Ripoll plate was not used.
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