I keep hearing about the redesigned T/C locks. When & why did they do this? What is redesigned?
I got a flint Renegade that I bought new in the mid 1970's & haven't had eny trouble with it.
I never personally used an old style...every old used one I bought I sent the lock to TC and asked them to make it as reliable as possible...they installed the redesigned parts no charge under lifetime warranty.
3-4 years ago when I was getting the itch for flintlocks, I had seen a lot of posts about problems with TC's and I discussed it with TC themselves...said the old style locks had a short hammer which caused short flint life due to the flint hitting down too low on the frizzen, closer to the pivot area, subsequently meeting a tremendous amount of resistance to tipping the frizzen open, compared to if it had hit the frizzen further up towards the top that would easily flip the frizzen open...results were "eating flints".
They significantly redesigned the hammer making it a lot taller and slightly changed the angle of attack...with these new locks I average 40-60 shots per 3/4" black english flint without really doing much to them...and could probably squeeze a few more out of them if I really worked at it.
In addition, the case colored frizzen was replaced with an all black frizzen, supposed to be improved / harder, giving more sparks, etc.
And they introduced a completely redesigned and much larger vent liner which gives instantaneous ignition...self cleaning / literally never needs a vent pick...my pet phrase is that the redesigned lock & vent liner makes them "like shooting a .30-30".
OLD STYLE TC FLINTLOCK (note severe 'S' shape, and barely tall enough to clear the fence...+ case colored frizzen)
NEW STYLE TC FLINTLOCK (note longer more graceful 'S' curve, much taller up above fence...frizzen is jet black...and huge new hex wrench vent liner)