roller locks

[doug]

    I think what I find difficult to understand is the geometry of the cock and frizzen on a lock.  If the tumbler is too close to the frizzen, obviously the cock just smacks the flint square onto the frizzen and produces few sparks.  If it is too far back, you end up with a strange looking lock and perhaps in the extreme has the flint scraping too parallel to the frizzen face.  Somewhere mixed in there is a happy medium which not only sparks well but also drops the sparks into the pan instead of falling too far forward and / or cooling too much before they reach the pan.  I have some locks which spark well and others that are pretty mediocre and I only partially see the difference in geometry.  I suspect that the length of the pivot arm on the pan cover also enters into the equation because the farther the pivot point is away from the frizzen face, the greater the degree is that the frizzen face rises up vertically rather than the corner between the pan cover and frizzen face arcing up and behind the edge of the flint

cheers Doug

[Bob Roller]

   I think what I find difficult to understand is the geometry of the cock and frizzen on a lock.  If the tumbler is too close to the frizzen, obviously the cock just smacks the flint square onto the frizzen and produces few sparks.  If it is too far back, you end up with a strange looking lock and perhaps in the extreme has the flint scraping too parallel to the frizzen face.  Somewhere mixed in there is a happy medium which not only sparks well but also drops the sparks into the pan instead of falling too far forward and / or cooling too much before they reach the pan.  I have some locks which spark well and others that are pretty mediocre and I only partially see the difference in geometry.  I suspect that the length of the pivot arm on the pan cover also enters into the equation because the farther the pivot point is away from the frizzen face, the greater the degree is that the frizzen face rises up vertically rather than the corner between the pan cover and frizzen face arcing up and behind the edge of the flint

cheers Doug

I did go the article on making a V pan Manton flintlock from Rifle Shoppe castings. I wouldn't want to do it. Those parts are too flimsy from normal shrinkage after being cast but it IS an elegant lock. In the mid 1990's
I made two sets of left and right flintlocks from Rifle Shoppe castings and will not undertake any more such jobs. They were made for "Bud"Garrett who later traded them or sold them to Frank Bartlett.What Frank did with them I don't know. Both men are now deceased.I did make my own mechanisms for all 4 of these locks and that helped a bit...maybe

Bob Roller