Frizzen bending?

[Eric Krewson]

I have been correcting the problems on an old Gustomsky trade gun of mine and have one more to be finished.

The pan cover will never seal off the pan because of the angle from the frizzen to the screw hole. The pan cover hits on the opposite side of the pan at such an angle that no amount of filing will close the cover to a tight seal.

Priming powder will leak out if the gun is tilted even slightly.

I need to bend the screw eye up to get the proper angle. Is it possible to make a heat sink around the frizzen to keep the heat away from it and retain the temper while bending the arm between the screw hole and the frizzen?

 

[Roy]

Yes, but bending cast parts sometimes leads into breaking.

 

[Artificer]

Eric,

I have never tried doing something like that, so I am not absolutely sure. (I have annealed frizzens to file the bottom flat so it would better fit the top of a filed pan and then rehardened and annealed them.) Also, I am not a trained welder.

However, one time I had to silver solder a HUGE and HEAVY magazine tube ring onto a 10 Gauge 3 1/2" Magnum barrel after the ring broke off from poor soldering. I normally would have used Brownells Force 44 or lower temp silver solder, but on this job I thought I really needed to use regular silver solder because that ring was so large and heavy.

Of course I was concerned about what silver soldering might do to the inside of that barrel. We had a couple of Machinists in the shop who had a lot of experience in welding and I asked them about something to use as a heat stop. They quickly discarded the notion of putting wet rags in the barrel and other things.

They suggested I use Brownell's Heat Stop Paste to fill in that area. So I made a dam and filled the barrel out to about two to three inches on each side of the area that I needed to solder.
http://www.brownells.com/gunsmith-...es/heat-stop-heat-control-paste-prod1121.aspx

One caution about using "Heat Stop" is that it will harden with heat and you HAVE to get it OFF wherever you put it soon after the part cools, because leaving it on for an hour or two can cause it to score the metal underneath. As mentioned in the directions, for light coats, use a wire brush and water. For the rather large amount in that shotgun barrel, I used a long brass rod to punch it out and followed with water. There was no damage to the inside surface of that barrel and that 10 gauge, 3 1/2" Magnum was fired many times without the ring coming loose again.

The jaws of the vise to hold the frizzen when you heat it will act as a heat sink to a degree. Personally, I would use Heat Stop on the exposed part of the frizzen between the area to be heated and the vise jaws.

Maybe someone with more welding experience may have a better idea, though.

Gus

 

[rich pierce]

I would not try to keep the temper. If you go chintzy on the heat, bending will be difficult and will stress the part. Go ahead and heat and bend it, then heat and quench, then temper in an oven to 450 for a couple hours. Following that stick the frizzen face into a soft apple or squash or whatever is handy, and temper the toe to purple with a torch. Toss the apple, frizzen and all into a bucket of water and you should be done.

 

[Vaino]

How much is it open? If not too much, I'd take a different tack....soft solder a steel shim onto the pan cover portion of the frizzen, blue the pan area and file the areas that show contact when the frizzen rotates on the screw. Go slow and a possible perfect contact is the result.

Soft solder melts at a low temp , but clamping the striking area w/ a somewhat shaped piece of steel in a vise would ensure that the frizzen remained hard.

As far as the solder melting....the frizzen should be out of the way when the prime ignites......Fred

 

[Flint311]

If it's the area I'm thinking of, is it possible to plug the screw hole and drill a new one slightly higher to change the angle when seated on the pan? (Not sure I'm thinking of this correctly or not :redface: )

 

[Eric Krewson]

All good ideas I think I will try Fred's first, I have some low temp silver solder paste that will work for this

This lock is crude by today's standards,the tumbler didn't go far enough through the lock plate to get the round part out of the outside edge of the lock plate. If I tightened the cock screw the cock would bind on the lock plate and not work. I used he gun for years with a finger tight cock screw, it is a wonder I didn't loose the cock as it wasn't a pressed on fit like locks today.

I thinned the lock plate under the cock so the tumbler shaft could protrude about.010, problem solved.

For years I was reluctant to change anything on the gun because it was a gift from a friend with terminal cancer.

 

[inlikeflint]

I also would built up the pan as it sounds like that is the problem. You could temporarily build it up with bondo to try, that should last a couple shots and if that works out do it with metal.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

If it's the area I'm thinking of, is it possible to plug the screw hole and drill a new one slightly higher to change the angle when seated on the pan?

IF the frizzen will fit when resting on the pan, but the problem is the lock screw location, then this is a good idea, providing of course that there is sufficient metal to allow a reposition of the hole. IF not, you'd have to get a welder to add metal to the frizzen.

If you start heating and bending, the above option might then be out of the question.

Is there another lock frizzen that would fit, that may be obtained undrilled for you to fit it to the lock instead of the original?

The bondo idea about addressing the pan shape instead of the frizzen shape is another good approach. It might only take a thin shim to bring the edge of the pan into alignment.

LD