Touch Hole

A touch hole is a small hole through which the propellant charge of a cannon or muzzleloading gun is ignited. In small arms, the flash from a charge of priming held in the flash pan is enough to ignite the charge within. In artillery, priming powder, a fuse, squib, or friction igniter is inserted into the touch hole to ensure ignition of the charge.

The powder in the touch hole was lit either with a slow match, a linstock or a type of Flintlock mechanism that was known as a gunlock.

Read more about Touch Hole:  Spiking The Guns

Famous quotes containing the words touch and/or hole:

    I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.
    Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)

    Wondrous hole! Magical hole! Dazzlingly influential hole! Noble and effulgent hole! From this hole everything follows logically: first the baby, then the placenta, then, for years and years and years until death, a way of life. It is all logic, and she who lives by the hole will live also by its logic. It is, appropriately, logic with a hole in it.
    Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)