Not to hi Jack but what you said Dave. The cock can be adjusted,,,HOW,,, please I'm trying to learn all I can. I know about flipping the flint but not adjusting the cock. Thanks
Well one way is to have a smith heat the neck and to bend the jaw slightly downwards. ONLY do that in an extreme case, as most locks tend to have pretty good geometry and once done it's done.
The next way is that first, you open the back of the leather in the jaw, so that the jaw screw is in direct contact with the bare back of the flint.
The leather looks like this out of the jaws
The upper version has the jaw screw inserted through the leather, so that if you lose the flint, the leather doesn't drop out either. The lower version is the more common, and simpler style.
The next thing is you use a wooden matchstick, under the base of the flint. This raises the back end just a bit, and changes the angle of the edge of the flint to less than 90° which can cause lots of problems when the impact angle is that square or nearly so. You use the smaller version of a wooden matchstick as you only need it to move a small amount. This also is important because all flints are different, and you might have one or two that need this to work well, but then the third and fourth one you find work well without it, so it's a temp solution to a current problem, and doesn't permanently alter your lock.
For the folks with a military musket using a lead wrap, you pound a bullet pretty flat, then cut a piece of lead off that flattened bullet, about the same size and shape as a small wooden matchstick, and insert it where the wooden matchstick would go to get the same result.
LD
