Now my dog lock tapers, I’ve seen videos of tge gun used as a pattern for it and can tell you where the difference are. However it’s as close as perdisoli is to an original.
What is the criteria you use to say the geometry and quality is not as good?
A lock works quickly and smoothly and sparks. It doesn’t eat flints. The working surfaces are smooth. What makes tge one better?
I’m an put in mind of a quote from the eighteenth century about the kings musket
I would have to look up the author
But he said the kings musket if not illy boared AS MANY OF THEM ARE can hit the figure of a man at eighty yards.
He went on to say that beyond a hundred yards you may as well shoot at the moon.
Service life was about twenty years.
I truly doubt that the kings musket could stand beside a repo today, on average. Honesty I read these same things about Italian and Japanese guns in the 1970s and 80s
I recall when CVA made the Mountain Rifle how Blackpowder report lambasted it, now it’s popular when one can find one.
I too had an unfounded prejudice against curry poppers, till I examined them and researched them
It depends on the lock, almost all Indian locks I’ve worked on have absolutely no geometric placement of the parts, they’re simply slapped together.
I have a french 1728 Indian made musket here.
Here is just a few observations i will make.
Tumbler; the tumblers are rough mill cut and is too small with very short placement of the tumbler notches, the lack of tumbler size has justified their need to make a sear with a very long nose to engage the tumbler, causing an inadequate throw.
The Sear placement in the lock is too far from the tumbler and placed to high with a sear spring that is not really made to fit the intended pattern of lock, the sear springs often are almost completely closed shut too, which is an obvious indication of a poorly located sear. This also makes for a very sloppy trigger pull. Lastly a sear is supposed to pivot freely without spring tension, attached to the bridal and with spring tension the sear seizes up.
Bridal: The intention of a bridal on a lock is to keep the internals from misaligning. The bridal on this lock is useless, it’s only on the lock for cosmetics, it’s placed in a position which causes the bridal to tilt the tumbler off balance. The bridals also rely on screw tension to keep it placed, as there are no integral pins to place it on the plate, so if the screw tension is too right on either side of the bridal the lock simply will not work correctly as there is too much downward pressure on either the sear or the tumbler rotation.
Mainsprings; the mainspring on this lock is simply not made well, the legs are closed almost completely and the legs on the spring are not tapered at all, the foot is around 3 mm to long and too high placing on the tumbler foot incorrectly, when at halfcock the mainspring foot has contact with the tumbler beneath and at the tip causing the spring to leave a witness mark in the tumbler and a mark on the undersize of the spring. This spring will eventually break on day at the foot of the spring, or jam up completely and just break on the lower leg. Lastly, Indian made mainsprings are difficult to temper because the steel that is used is some type of unknown alloy, this are the only springs i quench in a hot water brine of potassium nitrate and salts, i often simply just replace the mainspring as a show of good faith.
Frizzen and Frizzen spring and pans. the pans are roughly cut from mils, they are often too narrow and high with pan openings that are not very deep, this of course is a poor quality as the pans can only take so much powder if they’re shallow and narrow. The pans are also not fit to the plates correctly, they are screwed on as to where detached pans should ‘clip on’ with dovetailed edge on the final, the screw is there keep it from moving. On this Indian made lock, the screw does double duty, so a notch had to be cut under the pan to keep the mainspring from pushing it up causing a gap with the frizzen. Frizzens should be in the appropriate style of the lock, they simply are not in the correct style, they’re often drilled off center and have over filed toes and when at rest are almost completely closed over the pan. The.frizzen springs are often very chunky and placed too far in on the plate brining the foot of the frizzen very close to the bend in the frizzen spring, this causes the flint to be stiff and chew up flints. Frizzens are not made of any specific type of high carbon steel, they’re again, some type of steel alloy that is supposedly case hardened according to their distributors, they often do not spark very well, some do spark well after carburization for s short period of time. The fix is to dovetail or weld on a small shim of 1095 steel to the face or cut off the top of the frizzen steel and dove tail on new steel bottom with brazings around the dovetail, ii dont do this work anymore as it is costly in time and owners are not usually willing to pay for the fine work.
cocks: The cock is not shaped correctly, troubled already with a poor throw, the necks are too straight and do not strike the steel in a position that fully engages the flints to the steel, the cocks act more like a hammer smashing the flints. Flint cocks are supposed to strike a frizzens approptliatly sot that the frizzen is cut by the flints edge from top to bottom sending sparks downward towards the pan, marking a lock that sparks all that was intended by the makers, having it spark appropriately was clearly not a quality intended. This can be overcome by heating the neck of the cock and repositioning it, however i would advise against that as the steel on the lock is often not known. Annealing, hardening and tempering temperatures can often only be guessed at range, and not knowing the tolerances can leave it brittle. Top Jaws and screws are just awful.
Lock Finish, the locks are simply polished with a buffing wheel, with file marks polished over in critical locations like the tumbler. Polished over file marks act like hack saw blade teeth cutting up the plate and other parts with each pull of the cock, this leads to excess wear and advanced depreciation of the lock, creating the need to spot welded areas where material is lost or some how add shims and bushings.
Hardening, the distributor of this lock says that it was case hardened, the RC of the steel is around 43-45, i use special files and borrow a RC tester from a machinist friend, the parts are not appropriately case hardened, and i don’t believe they can be because of the steel quality, the best method I’ve done for working these locks is the remove all file marks and polish the parts and harden and quench in a brine and temper back at 400 for 1 hour, after that i temple the parts in a high speed cylinder with 2 mm steel shot, this creates a case hardened surface that is used on watch and clock gears, stainless steel is often used in modern watch and clock parts, shot peening as it is called is an effect way to create a wear resistance surface on many metals.
Lastly the screws are often made of very soft mild steel, as with this lock the screws are stripped and thread pitches not cleanly cut, screw holes are drilled pretty poorly.
In this 1728 lock i worked on (for a regimental member)
I completely reworked the lock, following most of the steps above.
Sear spring, there was enough real estate to move the spring higher so i did, i also reshaped the spring, opening it, making for a cleaner trigger pull, old hole was TIG welded and redrilled.
Sear was filed down on the top and moved slightly closer, agin enough real estate to weld up and redrill the crew hole. Bridle was welded and redrilled too.
To make the bridle more stationary i welded on a few small beads at the top and notched them into the plate, almost like an integral pin. I would have drilled a pin however there wasn’t enough material on the bridle to make it work. Tumbler arbor hole was welded up and redrilled correctly.
Frizzen spring was located further away towards the end of the plate, and the spring reshaped with more taper on the end, this aloud the frizzen to engage the pan better and not be so stiff.
All parts were hardened, tempered and shot peened. A new mainspring was made for the lock.
Lastly i US surcharged stamped the lock to match an original COS musket that used a 1728 musket lock.
A lot of handwork and effort was put into this lock to make it function adequately. With some much of the changes being cosmetic too, i spent around 20-30 hours on the lock for not profit of my work or time.
