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Old 25th July 2020, 08:02 PM   #8
Philip
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: California
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Default lock design and possible origin

What you have is a Norwegian or Swedish snap lock of exceptional workmanship and apparently late manufacture. Looks like it was intended for a sporting gun made for someone who could afford quality, and of somewhat conservative taste.

These snapping locks started out as snaphaunces sometime in mid- to second half of the 16th cent., with large external springs that powered the cock and retained the frizzen all-in-one. By the 17th cent., they evolved into flintlocks with a combined pan-cover and frizzen, the latter pivoting atop the pan-cover to provide a safety feature since the sear had no half-cock. In Norway and Sweden, the external mainspring remained the norm until quite late, whereas in the so-called Baltic lock, the spring and sear connection was entirely internal and the cock given a more graceful curved profile. Baltic locks were made in various areas in the region surrounding the Baltic Sea, including Russia.

The Swedish arms historian Rudolf Cederström points out 3 different designs of top jaw attachment which can be used as identifiers of geographic origin. The most common is the Swedish system, in which the underside of the rear of the top jaw is dovetailed into the corresponding area of the lower jaw (the cock body). Norwegian locks have a top jaw with a vertical tenon at the rear that slides in a mortise in the bottom jaw (same concept as on the miquelet locks of southern Europe). Baltic locks have a top jaw whose rear end is flared out and channeled into a U shape that rests over a corresponding curved part of the lower jaw.

Torsten Lenk, in his The Flintlock: its Origin and Development (English version ed. John F. Hayward, 1965) states that the Swedish style appeared on snaphaunce locks in the 16th cent., the Norwegian style in the 17th, with the Baltic style quite late in that century.

What you have is an anomaly. Note that its top jaw attachment is unlike any of the 3 above, it hinges on a horizontal pin. Also, it has a very sophisticated spring stop for the frizzen that positively locks it into place for firing. The innovative design and sophisticated manufacture suggest a time period very late in the 17th cent., possibly into the very early 18th. By then, of course, the mature version of the "French" flintlock had made solid inroads throughout northern and central Europe and was even produced in north Italy as well. By the 1670s or so, "early adopters" among well-to-do sportsmen would have been very familiar with the flintlock "alla moderna", so that's why I am suggesting that your lock was probably destined for a gun ordered by someone who was very fond of the old ways. After all, consider the enduring popularity of wheellocks in some niches of the German and Swiss markets, until the mid-18th cent.
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