lock "tuning " link

[armymedic.2]

Ive not seen this one before, so thought i would share it, as it was deep in the google results. some things on here i agree with completely, and others i do not, but mostly the things i think are wrong are cleaning methods, and well, they vary from person to person anyhow. enjoy http://www.brigadeofguards.org/gua...tury Firelock Reliability and Maintenance.pdf

 

[scottm2012]

Interesting stuff.

I spent the weekend with my brother flint hunting in PA. I was constantly watching him fill his pan and wondered if he thought his powder was caking. I was changing mine about every hour, him about every 10 minutes. Turns out his frizzen had a gap the size a small bear could hibernate in. I tried to explain to him about fitting his frizzen to the pan. This will do wonderfully.

 

[Billnpatti]

I have found a way to seal a pan/frizzen so that it is water tight, or nearly so. What you do is take a tiny bit of bullet lube and spread I thinly on the tip of your index finger. Rub your finger and thumb together to spread a thin coat of grease on your index fingertip. Then wipe your lightly greased finger tip across the edge of your pan. As you scrape off the grease from your finger tip, you can replenish it by rubbing your thumb and finger tip together again. This leaves the tiniest of rolls of bullet lube on the outer edge of the pan. Do this all around the front, back and outer edge of your pan. Then lower your frizzen onto the pan and the small amount of grease will seal up the pan very nicely. The secret is to not over grease the edges of your pan. Just a slight roll of grease or bullet lube is all you need. If that does not seal your pan, you have a serious pan/frizzen seal problem and will need to first get the frizzen to seat well on the pan with ideally no gap but realistically, only the tiniest of gaps. With this situation, the grease will seal your pan against any reasonable exposure to moisture. Of course if you are clumsy enough to drop your firearm in a pond or stream, maybe you need to stay out of the woods and stay home watching figure skating. :blah: :bull: :haha: Just kidding. Even I once fell down in the woods.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Mostly good, basic info. He uses lead to hold flint, not all will agree with that choice.
Sadly, the flint style he catagorizes as "not good" represents about 90% of what is available these days.
Some things I do are fairly routine with me. I use a flat diamond file to mate the frizzen to the pan. Rare to see a good fit in new locks these days. Fortunately an easy fix.

 

[azmntman]

I have never ever ever fallen in de woods running hell bent to cut off a herd....EVER. Actually I often fall upstairs these days...

 

[AZbpBurner]

I have found a way to seal a pan/frizzen so that it is water tight, or nearly so. What you do is take a tiny bit of bullet lube and spread I thinly on the tip of your index finger. Rub your finger and thumb together to spread a thin coat of grease on your index fingertip. Then wipe your lightly greased finger tip across the edge of your pan. As you scrape off the grease from your finger tip, you can replenish it by rubbing your thumb and finger tip together again. This leaves the tiniest of rolls of bullet lube on the outer edge of the pan. Do this all around the front, back and outer edge of your pan. Then lower your frizzen onto the pan and the small amount of grease will seal up the pan very nicely. The secret is to not over grease the edges of your pan. Just a slight roll of grease or bullet lube is all you need. If that does not seal your pan, you have a serious pan/frizzen seal problem and will need to first get the frizzen to seat well on the pan with ideally no gap but realistically, only the tiniest of gaps. With this situation, the grease will seal your pan against any reasonable exposure to moisture. Of course if you are clumsy enough to drop your firearm in a pond or stream, maybe you need to stay out of the woods and stay home watching figure skating. :blah: :bull: :haha: Just kidding. Even I once fell down in the woods.

I've got a tiny tin of what I was long ago told was for frizzen sealing. It's beeswax with something to make it soft enough to scoop out and spread with your finger.

Wasn't sure if it was a joke or not, but I've kept it all these years, mainly for the tin.

So, NOW it all makes sense

 

[AZbpBurner]

Mostly good, basic info. He uses lead to hold flint, not all will agree with that choice.
Sadly, the flint style he catagorizes as "not good" represents about 90% of what is available these days.
Some things I do are fairly routine with me. I use a flat diamond file to mate the frizzen to the pan. Rare to see a good fit in new locks these days. Fortunately an easy fix.

I've been using lead for quite a while now, and have had no issues whatsoever with it.

Sounds, though like you do take issue with lead use.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Sorry chaps but that's a good manual on How to Booger Up a Musket Lock. The instructions on hardening a frizzen are closer than the YouTube video of dropping it into a fire surrounded by leather and a closed, steel can, followed by water quenching..., but not by much. I wonder how you are supposed to know the color of the frizzen face when you cover it with Kasenit before heating? :shake: A fix of a few hundred shots is about three to four weekend events with your musket... why not do a fix that will work for 52 weekend events?

You should never use power tools on a lock unless you are a skilled machinist (imho). As for fitting the frizzen, they neglect to mention that it takes very little metal removal to fit the frizzen to the pan, and the problem may be in the pan alone, or in the pan as well as the frizzen. Taking off too much of the edge of the frizzen may modify the angle of the frizzen cam on the frizzen spring... now you have another problem to correct, AND one of the first things to check when a lock "eats" flints is the firzzen spring and the cam on the frizzen where it meets that spring. (Stones work fine for gradual fitting at home).

So they want you to modify the angle of the frizzen by 10 degrees for some muskets? Note they don't tell you to soften the frizzen before you do this, but they do say "grind" so I suppose we are talking power tools again, or you can kiss the face of your file goodbye for a properly hardened frizzen face will cause a file to "skate". It is a lot easier to modify the jaws of the **** to cant downward slightly on a French ****, or to bend the **** on an English ****. They do mention the danger of modifying the shoulder on the ****, but one of their answers is to bend out the tip of the main spring... these are often hardened, and if you smack them too hard (you aren't bending them with a pair of pliers) you run the risk of snapping off the tip. They also don't mention that extending the tip too far can force the tip into the angle of the tumbler when you move the **** to the "full" position..., which then requires removal of metal on the main spring to correct.

The weakness or hardness of mainsprings is another problem. Yes you may lower the power of the spring with filing, and you may also weaken it to the breaking point. When adding power, the FIRST thing you should do is to check the depth of the frizzen spring screw. For external frizzen spring screws have been known to be made too long, and protrude into the lock and interfere with the main spring, and the main spring is fine when this is corrected. As for heating and bending and quenching... they forgot "tempering" when done..., and their method is crude at best. So, you are again talking of snapping a mainspring.

I'd steer clear of this manual folks.

LD

 

[Rifleman1776]

Sounds, though like you do take issue with lead use.

Well...sorta..yes, no, maybe.
I have used both. Used lead quite a bit. It seems to be satisfactory in the Brown Bess but does not hold well in rifles. I'm back to leather exclusively. Ask me again in a year or so. :v

 

[Rifleman1776]

As for fitting the frizzen, they neglect to mention that it takes very little metal removal to fit the frizzen to the pan, and the problem may be in the pan alone, or in the pan as well as the frizzen. Taking off too much of the edge of the frizzen may modify the angle of the frizzen cam on the frizzen spring

You are, of course, correct. I'll explain my way of fitting pan to frizzen. Not a tutorial, just "my way".
If there is an unacceptable gap between pan and frizzen I will lightly rub a fine, flat diamond file on the bottom of the frizzen. If it is not flat the high spots will show. I'll then file a bit more vigourously until the pan/frizzen fit is acceptable. If it requires more than just a moderate amount of filing I'll do the same with the top flats of the pan. This does require trial and more work, laced with a lot of patience. I do not try to get a machine shop perfect fit, just close the frizzen so no light comes through where the two meet. I am cautious about not changing the geometry of the lock.

 

[StewartLeach]

A couple of years ago I bought a largish batch of flints, and have to agree that far too many have a sharp point on top, often higher on one side than the other.

Doug Davis of Colorado Springs taught me a neat way to make these into good flints. Davis is a tile setter by trade, and uses his tile saw with diamond blade to cut off the pointy tops. The only change I made to his technique is to hold the flint in a pair of slip joint pliers with thin leather pads glued to the inside of the jaws. It's surprising how much of an improvement can be made by removing just a little material to get 50 percent or so of parallel surface.

The same thing can be accomplished by hand with the coarse or extra course grades of diamond hand files. It just takes more time, but the results are good. I didn't do as well with small diamond grinding wheels for a Dremel tool.

White Fox

 

[don hepler]

All in all, it was good information, with a few things, beyond the average person's desire or ability. If I need a new frizzen, I buy one. I also buy locks, that meet the quality of what is reliable, or send them back, for replacement, if they don't. The cleaning, details are very good, and I use most of what he mentions. As in all advice, you soon learn to sort, the good from the bad. Learn a little here, a little there, and decide what works best, and pass on the good information, then they can decide. I appreciate the Link, thanks.

 

[scottm2012]

That is great info too. But unfortunately my brother's lock needs some fitting. With the lock removed and frizzen closed you can see where the lug contacts the pan and doesn't allow the frizzen to close completely. I suggested a triangle jewelers file to remove some of the material where the frizzen lug contacts the pan. I'll let him in on this little bit of information. As for the falling part I usually do that at the range. :blah:

 

[ghostdncr]

If there is an unacceptable gap between pan and frizzen I will lightly rub a fine, flat diamond file on the bottom of the frizzen. If it is not flat the high spots will show. I'll then file a bit more vigourously until the pan/frizzen fit is acceptable. If it requires more than just a moderate amount of filing I'll do the same with the top flats of the pan. This does require trial and more work, laced with a lot of patience. I do not try to get a machine shop perfect fit, just close the frizzen so no light comes through where the two meet. I am cautious about not changing the geometry of the lock.

Good advice here, and the way I've done it for years when working at home. FWIW, I'm a tool and die maker and frequently grind components to +/- .00005" (fifty millionths of an inch) and the method described here has proved to be more than adequate for me. An interesting point to the above, our eyes will detect light passing through a gap of something like .0003" (three ten-thousandths of an inch) so when you can no longer see light, it takes nearly nothing in the way of grease to seal off the pan! Progress measured on a nearly geological scale is what wins the day.

 

[Billnpatti]

Let me preface this by saying that I am neither a machinest nor a gunsmith and I have done this only two times, but it worked and you can't argue with success. The way I have fit the frizzen to the pan is to first determine that the frizzen/pan gap is very slight and needs only a small amount of fitting for a good seal. After making this determination, I remove the frizzen and use a diamond impregnated steel plate, that is intended for sharpening chisels, plane blades, etc. to polish out any unevenness from the frizzen. I do this by sitting the plate on my workbench so that it won't move while I am working with it. Then I carefully slide the frizzen across the diamond impregnated plate in long even strokes checking my progress after each stroke. I am not trying to correct great gaps, only small ones. Once the frizzen is flattened and polished, I replace it in the lock, close it and look for any fine gaps. Then I smoke the frizzen and close it, give a good tap with a rubber mallet to transfer the soot to the pan. Then I use a small diamond "stone" to remove the soot from the edges of the pan. I continue to do this until the gaps are closed. Like I say, I have only done this a couple of times so I am no expert and I have had to close up only small gaps between the frizzen and pan but it worked quite well for me. I think if I had a lock with large gaps, I would return it and ask for one that had a better frizzen/pan fit. One that I could do the finish fitting on.

 

[gland]

I use wax seal (For the toilet) from the hardware store to wax my handle bar stash. It is an oily wax mixture that seems as though it would work well in this area. $2.00 worth would seal about 10 million flash pans. :rotf:
Worth a try! :idunno:

sweed :thumbsup:

 

[Rifleman1776]

use a diamond impregnated steel plate,

I am a fan of the EzLap files. They are about the size of a tongue depressor and last for years and years and are inexpensive.

 

[Tater John]

.1 = tenth
.01 = hundredth
.001 = thousandth
.0001 = ten thousandth
.00001 = hundred thousandth
.000001 = millionth
.0000001 = ten millionth

You missed a zero in there :thumbsup:

 

[Zonie]

I'm pretty sure Mr Williams said,

"...frequently grind components to +/- .00005" (fifty millionths of an inch) ...".

IMO, adding the extra zero to write +/- .000050 to make it 50 is unnecessary because the last digit is a zero.

Course that's just me. :grin:

This reminds me of a true story.

I was in a meeting with a number of Engineers and one crusty old Manufacturing Engineer named Bill.

The crusty Mfg Engineer wanted the tolerances on a part increased .0002 (two tenths of a thousandths of an inch).

This set off a great argument with the various Engineers, some saying it would be fine and others acting like the sky would fall if it was approved.

After much argueing, old Bill spoke up by saying,

"Do any of you folks really understand how small two ten thousandths of an inch really is?"

The room went silent.

Old Bill continued,

"I'll tell you how small it is.

If your finishing your morning dump and the toilet paper rips as your cleaning up, you'll pause and look at your finger.
You won't see anything, but as you hold your finger up to your nose and take a whiff you will smell something.

That something is two ten thousandths of an inch."

The Engineers looked at one another and then agreed to increase the tolerance two ten thousandths of an inch. :rotf:

 

[Wes/Tex]