Can a spring lose its temper?

[pcrum]

In my never ending battle with my pedersoli bess lock, I've come across another problem. Some of you may recall I had a problem with my tumbler and I had to re-harden it. The end result was good, and the lock works very smoothly, however a new problem has reared it's ugly head. I can't seem to get more than a couple of weak little sparks at best. I've tried several different flints, all with very good sharp edges. The gun has had thousands of shots fired from it, both blank and live. The (hammer) frizzen is pretty gouged up, but still very hard- a file won't scratch it- I assume that this means it's hard enough to get a good spark? Or can a frizzen be hard, but not have enough carbon in it to spark well?
The other thing I noticed was in comparison to other besses, my mainspring seems very weak. It cocks very easily, and seems to fall visibly slower/softer than the others'. Riding the **** down reveals nothing that would indicate binding or roughness. I have another mainspring on a spare lock, but would have to fit it- it seems considerably thicker/chunkier than mine.
Can a spring lose its spring? If so, can it be brought back by tempering? If that is possible, how?

Thanks,

 

[sherpadoug]

The only way I know of that a spring can loose its temper is extreme heat, like drawing it in an oven. A spring that is poorly tempered can also bend. The clue would be that it would be mis-shaped out of the gun. It could then be softened, bent back into shape, and retempered. Another possibility is that it was not tempered through its full thickness. Then it might crack through the tempered part and then bend. The crack could be small and hard to see.

Sorry if I am not much help...

 

[Stumpkiller]

Sure. More likely it was either a bad original tempering or it has been overflexed and lost it's resistance.

 

[bezoar]

a spring can loose its temper. you can test this fact on your own if you like. and most manuals will tell you this little fact.

 

[pcrum]

I do have some Kasenit. Do I do the normal "cherry red" then kasenit for a couple minutes, quench, than oven temper like I would for a tumbler or frizzen? I worry that this would make it brittle and snap.

As always, I appreciate all the help.

 

A spring can take a set but it won't change temper unless it's heated to the necessary temperature to draw the hardness. In other words, it may start to lose its snap if it was a poor piece of steel to begin with. Most modern springs won't take a set but who knows if it was an import. I would fit the spare mainspring and see it that helps.

 

[Zonie]

Don't use the Kasenit on the spring.

Springs must be made of a thru hardening material, and then thru hardened.

As was mentioned, a spring made out of good material will last a long time, but they do sometimes weaken if their left in a loaded condition. This is sometimes called creep, and if the design of the spring, the material and the heat treat is correct, it shouldn't happen

IMO, without knowing exactly what the sping material is, it is somewhat dangerous to try to re-harden it and temper it.
A little error can make it too hard, or too soft.

If the spring in the other lock looks very different from the one in your lock, it might be a redesigned spring.
I think rather than trying to use it, I might be first tempted to contact Pedersoli and buy a new spring.
If it is heavy, as you said the other spring is, it would indicate it was redesigned.
If it is light, like your current spring, it says redesign was not necessary and the other spring is probably too heavy for your lock.

As for the frizzen, IMO, the amount of carbon in the steel does have a direct bearing on how well it will spark.
The confusing part is that you said the frizzen is still file hard. Usually when the case of carbon is worn off, the rest of the material is relatively soft.

If you want to use your Kasenit on anything, the frizzen would be the place to do it.
The added carbon should help it to spark better.

Again, if you do case harden the face of the frizzen, because we don't know what the material is, it should be oil quenched. If that doesn't harden it, then the water quench is in order.

I seem to have lost the instructions to the Siler kit I built, so I'm guessing on the tempering temperature. My guess is 500-520 degrees F (Brown-Purple). This is a common temperature for axes, wood chisels, cold chisels, center punches. In other words, it's hard but tough enough to take the impact of the flint.

 

[pcrum]

I called Dixie, and spoke with Jamey there. He told me that they did in fact change to a bigger/stronger mainspring in the past ten years. Apparently the smaller, older style had a tendency to break or get weak. (imagine that!) His suggestion was to fit the new style to my lock- he indicated that this is really the only fix, as they don't make the old style ones anymore.
the new one is actually too big for the lock mortise. I assume that I'd be better off to inlet it in rather than make the spring smaller?
thanks again,

 

[Zonie]

If you buy the new spring, inlet the stock to clear it.
It's real easy to frinkel up a new spring by grinding on it. The little almost invisible cracks left behind can come back to haunt you.

 

[rich pierce]

I'll say this- you need a new lock. This one is one problem after another. There's nothing worse than a flintlock with a bad lock.

Cheap backwoods trick for a weak spring is to put another spring inside the curve of the weak spring. Find a sear spring, frizzen spring, etc and cut to fit. This is often seen on real frontier old guns- Indian guns, etc. Another cheap backwoods trick is to put a piece of wood in the bend, forcing the spring wider open and giving it greater tension. A recipe for breaking the spring, as it forces a smaller portion of the spring to do the work. Still, if in the backcountry and needing the gun to fire for protection or food, it would get a weak springed gun to function a bit longer.

 

[pcrum]

Well normally I'd use this as an "excuse" to get a whole new gun! The Loyalist 1st model comes to mind.... :hmm:
But, I just plonked down a pretty tidy chunk of change for the Jaeger, so I'll have to make do for now.
I am partial to this bess as I've humped through the woods for 10+ years now and it's bagged both game and Frenchmen/british/savages. It's been out with me on treks that were so cold my skin stuck to it. I've slept with it at -14F.
I did change out the spring last night. I had to chisel out a little bit of wood to get it to fit. It still barely sparks. I spent the evening cleaning up the face of the hammer(frizzen)so I can try my hand at recarbonizing it with some Kasenit. It has some really deep horizontal gouges in it where the flint first strikes, I wonder if this is part of the problem. This weekend I'll try that and see what happens. The only problem- Zonie mentioned tempering at 550F my oven only goes to 500! Hopefully that will work.

one other thing to mention- I've always had some issues with sparking this gun. I always assumed user error, until I checked out a couple other guns of the same make.



Cheers,

 

[rich pierce]

If your frizzen is hard enough that you can't scratch it with a file, hardening it will not normally help. I bet you'll have better sparking when you get the gouges out of the face. That it is so gouged, however, suggests it may not be so hard. Hard to say. ::

 

[Zonie]

As for tempering the frizzen after hardening it, keep these things in mind:
The area where the screw passes thru the frizzen should not be real hard.
The area where the upright leg of the frizzen meets the pan does not have to be hard. In fact, having both of these areas in the medium hard range if not a relatively soft range is an advantage. Hard stuff is brittle and breaks easily. Softer material is tough and hard to break.

The higher the tempering temperature, the softer and tougher the material will be.

Having said all of that, if you have a small propane torch, polish the frizzen so you will be able to see the color on the pan cover area and the material around the screw hole.

Holding the frizzen by the upright leg with some pliers, slowly heat the lower pan cover area with the torch and watch carefully for the colors to appear. Direct most of the heat towards the screw hole material and almost none at the area where the pliers are. (A real low flame helps you keep control.)
It is a good idea to direct the heat towards the underside of the pan cover so the deflected heat bypasses the upright area of the frizzen. If you heat the pan cover area fron the top, the deflected flame will hit the area you want to keep hard.
Remember, do this heating slowly and gently.
It won't take long for the yellow, then the straw, brown, purple to start to appear.
When the corner of the pan cover area, where it starts to go upright towards the flint striking area turns brown to purple, instantly dump the part into a can of room temperature oil.
You don't want the heat to migrate up the frizzen face any more than you can help.
:front:

 

[pcrum]

Just curious, has anyone ever tried using heat sink paste on the parts that you don't want to get too hard?
Heat sink past is the stuff that is used in welding applications where you have a part that you don't want to get hot that is connected to a part you are welding. They're used in automotive work on occasion. Similar to the concept where a samurai sword maker puts clay on the back of the blade to keep it cool while he tempers the cutting edge.

 

[sherpadoug]

When the corner of the pan cover area, where it starts to go upright towards the flint striking area turns brown to purple, instantly dump the part into a can of room temperature oil.

Isn't quenching it in oil going to defeat your purpose? I though the part had to cool slowly to draw the temper. I could see quenching the upright leg so it doesn't get heat traveling through the steel from the lower part. How about grabbing the hot lower section in a potholder and quenching the cool upright leg?

As for heat sinking, I have heard of holding opals, a heat sensitive stone, in Jello so you can solder the metalwork without damaging the stone.

 

[pcrum]

[/quote]

As for heat sinking, I have heard of holding opals, a heat sensitive stone, in Jello so you can solder the metalwork without damaging the stone. [/quote]

Now that's wierd! Soldering a stone in jello?

 

[pcrum]

Ok, I think I may be on to something here-
I polished the face of the frizzen, which was really hard to do. Since it was so hard to polish (I used emery cloth- a file wouldn't even scratch it) I decided that there was no way that I had worn through the hard layer. Still barely any sparks, mostly none at all. However, a spark did go off in my head- I recall reading somewhere (maybe here?) that the only function of the frizzen spring was to keep it shut, and didn't really have much to do with the spark. So, I removed the frizzen spring, and would you belive the thing sparks like crazy? I examined the spring, and it has some crosswise grooves in it where the toe of the frizzen rests when it is shut, and when it is open. Would assume that my next step will be to polish these grooves out of the spring?


You guys rock! I really appreciate the help! You all are going to make a smith out of me yet!
:thumbsup: