Cratex mandrel and rubberized abrasive bullet points that fit your pan.
Cr 1650, not counting snaphaunce and micholets till now. Almost four centuries.Couple hundred more years and we will have to quit calling it a "fad".
I tried polishing around the nipple area on a percussion snail and sandpaper stuck on some appropriate shaped sticks was the solution. Don't have a dremel. That would have worked better.
I think both.
Yes. Really doesn’t take that much effort all things consider. Something I was taught early on. Shoot in the upper 90°F and near triple digit humidity a few times like we see here in the Carolinas and you will become a believer in polishing the pan and the difference it makes when wiping it between shots. Or don’t and complain about misfires. Here is an old photograph of one of mine, no power tools used.
I can’t say about all the original guns, but in south Louisiana and central Mississippi I want my pan polished as slick as possible. Easy to tell when it’s clean and dry.
I have hunted the Valley and agree that the weather conditions there are challenging. If as cast unpolished pans work for you, great. I’ve just found that a polished pan helps.
In the following illustration from Diderot's Encyclopedia, fig. 23 shows a "Pan Grinder" they used to cut the pan in the lock plate. A separate Bow (fig. 6) with the string wrapped around the cylinder turned it when cutting.
