A Neapolitan miquelet pistol

[Fernando K]

HELLO

I attach a photograph. The Ottoman keys continued to use this method. Here you can see that the piece that acts as a screw has been removed from the frizzen and the faithful one, slightly conical, has also been removed so that it sits and does not move.

affectionately

[Philip]

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.