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Old 5th March 2022, 05:21 AM   #13
Philip
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Location: California
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Default a matter of translation

Oh, what is described in the thread as a "faithful" is what is known in Spanish as a fiel which is a pin drilled transversely through a screw and its threaded hold to keep it from backing out or loosening with use. James D Lavin in his A History of Spanish Firearms pp 164-65 explains this quite well, it was a common feature of early locks (before the mid-17th cent) probably because screw-threading techniques were in that era not as precise as later on. By the 1640s, only the frizzen and cock pivot screws still used them. According to sources cited by Dr Lavin, the frizzen pivot screw was the last application for the fiel and this feature generally disappeared by the 18th century.

I have handled numerous examples of miquelet locks in my collection and restoration practice and find all this to be the case.
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