I flatten a lead ball I use for my guns. If I have one that is undweight, or imperfect, or has casting flaws, I put that aside to hammer out to use as a flint wrap.
In my article, I tell readers how I came about to use lead as a wrap for my flints. I give the simple test that was used by my late friend, Don Latter, to cinvince me. I ask readers to do the test for themselves, and not to do something because " I " say so( or say to not do something!)
Roundball has been a constant critic of mine, here for reasons that have nothing to do with my articles. He refuses to do the test correctly, and so is convinced that I am wrong. Some of my other critics fall in the same trap. You have to turn the lights out and wait for your eyes to properly dialate if you are going to see the colors and the difference in quantity of sparks. I can't see them in daylight, either. I suppgest that anyone's opinion based on NOT doing the simple test CORRECTLY is not worth much more than you pay for it.
I wrote the article, with that part in it, to give All Flintlock shooters a simple way to determine what works best for their guns. LIke you, when I started out, I had a million questions, and the flintlock shooters in my club were few, and their answers contradicted each other. O didn't know what to think.
Then, Don joined the club. He had learned much of what he knew about tuning flintlocks by trial and error. If he had a question that could not be answered, he would devise a simple test to learn the answer. Like him, I had spent a couple of years by that time reading everything I could find in print about the traditional guns, trying to get the answers to my questions. Much of the stuff I read in books was also wrong. When I asked Don about some of it, he would prove its wrong, by showing me simple tests he did with locks.
In 1979, I found an article on "Fine Tuning Flintlocks", by Buz Fawcett, in the Guns& Ammo Black Powder Annual, in 1979. He interviewed Bob Traurig, from Minnesota, who really was an expert at tuning locks. The article has many details about tuning locks that agreed with Don's, and confirmed some other things I had learned on my own. Of course, it went beyond what I knew. It led me to find a good book on flint knapping- D.C. Waldorf's " The Art of Flint Knapping", so that I could better understand how flint breaks naturally, and why Bob's "angles" worked so well in flintlocks. My article is an attempt to simplify these ideas, and put them together so that shooters don't have to do that kind of deep reading to get their flintlocks to shoot fast, and reliably. T/C flintlocks- the new version-- which Roundball is so fond of, has changed the angle of the cock so that the new cocks have the flint edge striking the frizzen at 60 degrees. They also seemed to have shorted the length( height) of the cock in relation to the distance from the center of the tumbler to the middle of the flashpan, so the edge of the flint no longer strikes so high on the face of the frizzen, as it did with the old locks. The T/C locks now have the flints scraping steel from the frizzen, instead of gouging steel out of it. I don't know about the spring tension of the mainspring, or of the frizzen spring. For all I know, the locks may still be eating flints. Bob Traurig indicated that in a finely tuned lock, this should not happen. By reducing the tension of first, the frizzen spring, and then the mainspring, you increase the life of your flints by 3 times, and sometimes even more.
The only benefit I have found for using lead as a wrap is the added speed I get when the cock falls, helping the edge drive into the frizzen as it scrapes steel from its face, and throws those sparks into the pan. It has to do with adding wait at the end of an arc of a rotating part, so that gravity works with the mainspring to speed the cock and flint into the face of the frizzen.
A simple test is to take a piece of clothesline rope, and spin it in a circle. You will see the end trailing behind your hand even after you have it up to speed.
Now if you put a simple knot in the end of the rope, the knot will hardly trail at all, and you can feel the rope increase it speed of rotation as its going down towards the ground, while it slows as it is fighting the force of gravity as its coming up again.
If you then tie a weight with that knot to the end of the rope, gravity is still at work, but the increase in speed of the falling weight is proportionately faster, because you are using gravity to help speed the fall. Gravity is actually at work with the bare line, and with the line with the simple knot on the end, but its way more difficult to feel and see it in action. But, now that you know its happening, go back and first remove the tied on weight, so you have that simple knot again, and " feel " the force of gravity, then take the knot out of the rope and spin it as when you started, and "feel " the force of gravity there, too. It was there, all the time, but its easier to feel with the weight.
That is WHY the extra weight of using a thin lead wrap helps the cock speed up on its fall to the frizzen, and helps the flint cut steel better. That is HOW more and hotter sparks are produced, and HOW the sparks are thrown Faster into the pan. Because the speed of the fall occurs as the edge is about to or is cutting steel, you can reduce the tension of the frizzen spring, and of the mainspring, and not slow your ignition. The net result is the lock fires faster. That is what fine tuning is all about.
I weighed my flintwrap on my Cochran Rifle Lock, and it weighed about 31 grains. I have not weighed a similar sized piece of leather, Because I don't have one. But, even if it only weights 5 grains( Thin, raw hide, wetted and compressed to dry), I am only adding 25 grains or so to what someone using leather to wrap their flints. With 437.5 grains to the ounce, and 7000 grains to a pound, I am certainly not doing any harm to the lock parts. Where leather actually acts as a shock absorber, and allows the edge of the flint to bound back off the frizzen at the very time I want it to be cutting steel, the lead wrapped flint does not rebound at all.
Using the 60 degree angle, hitting a frizzen that is bent to the rear 10 degrees, I get a 130 degree angle of fracture, which is the "Hertzian Cone" that represents the natural angle of fracture for silicates. By changing the angle of Impact from 60 degrees, you obtain shorter, or longer flakes.
I use this to allow the flint to knapp a new edge every time it strikes the frizzen so that I have a new, clean edge for the next shot. NO Chips clogging the edge, and therefore, no reason to be concerned about knapping the flint every few shots. The only time I knapp the flint is when I am squaring a new edge to the frizzen, either when I put a new flint in the cock, or move a used one forward. Then, i lift the frizzen up so that when the cock is lowered manually, the edge will strike the bottom portion of the face of the frizzen. I hold the frizzen in that position with the side of my off hand thumb, cock the cock to full-cock, and pull the trigger( empty gun and pan, please!) The steeper angle of impact of the edge hitting the "heel " of the frizzen causes a thin, long spawl to be removed from the underside of the edge of the worn flint, while the entire width of the flint is cut "square " with the width of the face of the frizzen, with a minimum of edge being lost. Ther result is a sharp flint edge, that is square to the frizzen face, and will have the entire width of the flint cutting steel with each shot.
Happily, several members here have tried my late friend's test and found it valid. I have many friends both at the club, and elsewhere who have tried the test, and then let me guide them through tuning their locks who have switched to lead wraps, and are much more fanatically about using them than I am. But they love shooting their flintlocks now, and are happy to send me emails when they win another rifle match, beating the percussion shooters, too. I have tuned locks for other people, including members on this forum, but I would rather teach others how to do this yourself. I can send you a copy of the Buz Fawcett article if you want a copy. Just send me a PT with your snail mail address. :hatsoff:
