Hardening an L& R Frizzen

[duelist1954]

I recently built a swivel breech rifle. This gun has a frizzen piece for each barrel made from the front ends of a pair of L&R Manton locks.

When I was building the gun I found one frizzen to be so hard that a file skitters across the back of it, while the other one filed and polished easily.

I was worried that the soft one might not spark well, but it is just the opposite. The harder one is causing lots of misfires. I often fail to ignite the primer with it. I'll close the pan and try again, and often it will go off on the second or third attempt.

knapping the flint sharp helps, but not always, and only for a shot or two.

Any recommendations? Anneal it? Get a new frizzen?

 

[44-henry]

Sounds like it was just never tempered enough, easy fix. Clean it off to remove any oil (if you are married you will thank me later for that tip) and place in your kitchen oven. The correct tempering temp is 375-400, but if you are not sure how accurate your oven is start at 350 and temper for one hour. After letting it cool to room temperature you can test and repeat as necessary until it sparks properly, moving up the temp in 25 degree segments each time. Just do not go higher than 400 or you may have to re-harden. I generally do two temper cycles and than draw the tail and base back to a blue with a propane torch while suspending the face in a can of water. These areas do not need to be as hard as the face and this step helps prevent breakage in this area.

 

[wattlebuster]

Unless these locks were bought as kits an built/hardended by the buyer should'nt that have been done at the lock makers an inspected for quality/sparking ability BEFORE it left the factory :idunno:

 

[44-henry]

Yes, it should have been but does not always work that way. Since there were modifications I doubt that there would be any warranty options anymore, but might be worth a try.

 

[LRB]

Very good advice, but if your using your kitchen range, use a separate oven thermometer for reading temp. Common ranges are more often incorrect than not.

 

[ZUG]

A toaster oven will work also but here again use a separate thermometer or TWO.

 

[SDSmlf]

Have you called or emailed L&H? Explain the problem and bet they take care of it. Had an issue with a GPR replacement lock (flint) and repaired/replacement was in my hands in less than a week after mailing problem lock back.

 

[LRB]

Due to their more confined internal space, most toaster ovens are prone to fluctuate the temperatures in a pretty wide range during the cycling, often over shooting the temp a good deal more than desired in the recovery cycle. A kitchen range oven is much superior, and if the piece to be tempered can be buried/covered, in clean dry sand, even better yet.

 

[MSW]

if a call to the mfg doesn't get you where you need to be, I'd follow Mr. Ellerbe's advice. He seems a pretty knowledgeable fellow. (that is, he knows a boatload more than i do about such matters)

 

[jerrywh]

I often use a toaster oven for this but I insert a thermocouple in the oven. The temp of the toaster oven is often off at least 50°. They swing up and down do to the type of control they have. They do the job with a separate thermometer though because the steel part tends to remain more stable than the toaster temp. I have done dozens of frizzens and hundreds of other parts this way.
Wick is a real expert at heat treating steel. I'm sure he knows more than I do about it. The knife makers are the best at it because they use so many different kinds of steel.

 

[Col. Batguano]

What color are the sparks? Big fat gloppy red ones would indicate too soft a frizzen, and small white ones too hard. You want medium sized ones with an orange-yellowish tint to them.

 

[duelist1954]

Thanks to Ian Pratt, who sent me some detailed instructions my frizzen seems to be sparking well. It is a little softer now...a file doesn't skitter right off the back, but it is still pretty hard.

I heated a can of vermiculite up to 385 degrees in the oven, buried the frizzen in it and baked it for an hour and 15 minutes. Getting a good shower of sparks now.

Thanks for all the advice.

 

[nwtradegun]

send it back to l and r.

 

[duelist1954]

Why send it back when I was easily able to fix it myself, and it is now working?

 

[M. De Land]

The color of sparks has always been a mystery to me having read about and examining them for a few years. I am beginning to think it is meaningless as any color spark shower I have observed hitting the pan charge squarely will ignite it with equal enthusiasm.
Beside that the color of sparks has more to do with the alloy and carbon content in the Frizzen and to a lessor degree the sharpness and quality of the flint used , in my opinion.
I will need to experiment more on differing frizzen hardness to get a feel for what works best on that front.
I sure would like to have a Rockwell tester in my shop!

 

[M. De Land]

I suspect that temper draw is important for spark production but wonder about the reason for it. I suspect it has more to do with breaking up the glaze often accompanying the heat treat rather than the molecular change drawing the brittleness out causes.
I have found that simply wiping a frizzen face a few times with your finger to get rid of the fouling will change the spark generation. Apparently a bit of body oil and fouling lubes the frizzen enough to dampen spark production.
I also suspect that a quick frizzen wipe of an alcohol patch between shots would go a long way in uniforming spark generation, a thing I plan to try soon.
I have also found that a flint edge tune up with a copper pointed pressure flaker between relays makes for more consistent spark generation. Just takes a minute or so.

 

[LRB]

There should be no great mystery in this. You will find that the simple steels such as 1095 will be the best sparkers. It is pretty much just iron and carbon. High alloys most often do not allow the best sparks. I know of no "glaze" induced by heat treat. More the opposite with a soft thin layer of decarb, easily ground off, and will not return, and there will be no molecular changes in the steel, because steel is a crystal structure.
Frizzens that are full hard allow even the best of flints to remove only tiny bits of steel, which burn white because the tiny pieces are so quickly and completely consumed by a higher heat produced from the higher speed of the flint moving down the frizzen than if moving down a softer surface. Flint gets a deeper bite on slightly softer steel, slowing it's motion, taking off larger pieces, and producing a larger spark that burns longer and cooler due to it's increased mass. All locks are not the same. Some, usually the smaller locks, will work fine with white hot sparks, but the larger locks most often work better with orange-red/yellowish sparks that burn larger and longer. Often, a large lock with a too hard frizzen will have the white sparks burn up in flight before igniting the powder.

 

[rich pierce]

Best, most easily understood explanation yet, for me.

Interesting to me that many folks use a piece of an old file with the teeth carefully ground off, for starting fire with flint and steel. That's pretty hard. I don't know what tempering if any is used on files following hardening.

 

[LRB]

In using a fire striker and a hand held flint, the entire action to produce spark is entirely different. The out come is the same in that a spark is produced. Whereas a flint striking a very hard frizzen would throw white sparks, and a hand held flint and fire striker of equal hardness will usually throw bright yellow/red-orange-sparks, the friction produced is different. The **** held flint strikes the frizzen at a very high speed and great potential force. The frizzen instantly moves away from the force reducing the force of impact but allowing the flint to retain much of it's speed as it rakes down the frizzen. This double action of both **** and frizzen in motion, prevents the flint from taking too much steel, too deeply, and increases the friction heat, making white hot sparks. When using a fire striker and flint, you cannot reproduce the action of a good lock in speed or force. Therefore, the hand held striker hits the hand held flint, with very little give in the flint being struck, and the steel that is striking is of less force, slower, and is able to allow the flint to get a larger bite of steel making a larger spark. More to do with friction and angle than with actual force though. Also, with a fire striker, there is usually a much more narrow strike zone which puts a bit more strike force into a concentrated area with less effort, than a wide surface would give. Some of the early trade strikers were as narrow as 1/16" to 1/8".

 

[M. De Land]

When carbon content in annealed steel is at room temperature it is in a non hardening form known as pearlite. When heated it must first pass through the decalescence point (metal absorbs heat without becoming appreciably hotter than it's surroundings).
When this occurs the molecular carbon change is from pearlite to martinsite (hardening carbon).
Full hardening cannot occur unless the steel passes the decalescence point and the marinsite is trapped in that molecular form by rapid cooling known as quench.
Drawing temper in hardened steel partially anneals it by manipulating the martensite trapped by the rapid cooling. This relieves the stress but also reduces the hardness to some extent.
Drawing temper will always reduce hardness to some degree and the reason is because it is a method of manipulating the martinsite on a molecular level.
Interestingly steel when cooling slowly will actually rise in heat as the carbon is changed back into non hardening form (pearlite)even though it's surroundings may be cooler. This is called recalescence.