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Intro

In this video/article let’s continue talking about the muzzleloader tech. But today I’m not going to talk about matchlock or flintlock or even percussion cap lock but I want to talk about the wheellock. So I’m thinking if this is probably the first time I've talked about the wheellock in my channel. But anyway, as one of the most typical and classical muzzleloader locks, we will talk about it more in the future.

Pyrite and Wheel

In this video/article, I’m not going to focus on the mechanism or how it works but I want to focus on a key part of the wheel-lock. I believe many viewers of my video/articles are also fans of muzzleloaders so you must know this point as well. But this video/article should be basic content and I think it’s a good fit as the first episode of wheellock story.

So what is the key part? This is the pyrite and it was usually used on the cock of a wheellock. A few days ago I made a small animation for wheellock. I think this small animation can very clearly show how the wheel-locks ignite the gunpowder and fire.

Analogy with flintlock, the flint can strike the frizzen in order to make sparks and the sparks can ignite the priming powder. Finally the gun can fire. In wheel-lock, the spring forces the wheel to spin very quickly and the pyrite will touch the wheel and then both can make a lot of sparks. Finally the sparks ignite the priming powder and the gun fires. The principle of igniting gunpowder is plain and simple, which is just like how a Zippo lighter works.

But why did the designer decide to use pyrite but not flint? It’s actually a very detailed point. Before, I didn’t know it either and even never noticed this point. In comparison, actually the flint is far better than pyrite in the ability of generating sparks. But most of the designers still choose the pyrite. Because although the flint can make more sparks, it’s far harder as well. We know that the wheellock is able to make sparks by friction. So if the wheel-lock uses the flint, the harder flint would quickly grind off the rough surface texture of the wheel. Then it would result in this wheel-lock needing more and expensive repairs if he wants to use this wheel-lock gun long term.

Extra Content

At the end of the part, I want to share why the wheellock didn’t replace the matchlock? In fact, this is a history question and we need to stand on many different directions to watch it and finally we can infer a more objective answer. So here this is only a very brief conclusion. In the late wheel-lock story we will also continue to talk about it deeper.

This brief conclusion should be that the complicated mechanism and high cost blocked that more people could equip the wheel-lock. The complicated mechanism probably made the wheel-lock guns be built up harder. The high cost made the wheel-lock guns become a kind of firearm used at larger scales harder. So finally the wheel-lock gun was commonly used on personal defense weapons in the military and the militaries still kept the matchlock guns instead of the wheel-lock guns before the flintlock techniques got mature.

So this is today’s video/article and thank you for watching. Hope you can like this video/article. Have a good day. See you next time. Bye!