If you examine the Musket Nipple, and compare it side by side with a more traditional nipple for #11 caps, you will find that the musket Nipple is not only larger in diameter, but its tapered, too, whereas the standard nipple is smaller in diameter and exhibits little or no taper to it. That taper puts a lot of metal supporting the musket nipple that is missing in a standard #11 nipple.
Based on that difference in design, the musket nipple SHOULD be expected to last a long time and stand up to the abuse of repeated hammerings to the top edge of the nipple.
Have you ever measure the main spring tension on your musket?? ( put the gun, empty, on its butt on your bathroom scale, standing upright, and note the "weight" of the gun on the scale. Then, while slowly cocking the hammer back to the full cock notch, watch the scale to find the maximum weight it takes to pull the hammer to full cock. Do this several times, and take an average. Subtract the weight of the gun and you have the main spring tension weight. With those big musket hammers, it doesn't take much main spring tension to ignite a cap. If the internal orifice of the nipple is in good shape- that's the first thing to "burn out" on the nipple--- there is no reason for you to maintain a heavy mainspring to hold the hammer down on top of the musket cap after it fires. 10 lbs. of tension is more than enough to ignite those caps. Based on observing several Zuave .58 caliber rifles over the years, I would anticipate that your tension is in the 30 lb. range, but may be over 40 lbs. If you are bruising your thumb cocking the gun to shoot, The spring is almost always way over 30 lbs.
Some of the guns I have examined have not had the lock removed and the internals cleaned, polished, or oiled, so that just doing these things reduces the friction that adds to the weight needed to cock the hammer. But, once I get past these changes, I find the mainsprings are much stronger than is really needed to fire the gun. If they are not damaging the nipple, because of the sturdy design of the nipple, they are adding a lot of " Rattle and Tickle" to the gun which contributes a lot to inaccurate and inconsistent shots.
I believe that all MLer locks should work like, and BE TREATED LIKE a fine Swiss Watch. While the lock parts are not as small or as delicate as those in a Swiss Watch, They were designed about the same time in the development of mechanical devices. The relationship between the parts are remarkably similar. Compare the internals of a wheellock action to a large watch, and then compare the Wheellock to the internal parts of your flintlock, or percussion lock to see what I am talking about.
Reducing mainspring tension stops a lot of wear on all the other lock parts, not the least of which is the wearing of the tumbler in the lock plate hole. Helping you shoot smaller groups is a bonus.
