Book to learn flintlock lock work

[sonny]

I am looking to find a book to teach me about tuning an smoothing out the inter working of flintlock locks. Is there such a book with pictures to learn this art???.............sonny

[KC]

I've often wondered the same thing. I've found snipits and overviews in various publications like Kit Ravenshear's booklets and there's some info in The Gunsmith of Grenville County. The best information I have seen is right here on this forum in some past posts, do a search and you'll find some of them. It's unfortunate that the Photobucket debacle has made the pictures in some of the posts go away.
K.C.

[Tim Crosby]

 See if this helps:

   http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=2585.msg24681#msg24681

  Tim C.

[rich pierce]

Most of that thread is about the exterior. I don’t recall a good lock tuning thread with pictures because each lock has its own challenges.  If all that’s needed is polishing it’s simple.

Make sure the moving arms of the mainspring, frizzen spring, and sear spring are not scraping on the plate. Relieve where necessary.  Make sure the frizzen is against but not binding on the barrel.

Where springs ride on a surface, polish.  These include the mainspring on the tumbler, the sear spring on the sear, and the frizzen spring on the frizzen toe.

Every axle should move freely. Tumbler in lockplate, tumbler in bridle, sear on its bolt, frizzen on its pivot bolt.  Very difficult to polish on an already assembled lock without making the fit sloppy. 

The angle of the sear nose should match the angle of the full cock notch and all should fall on a line drawn to the center of the tumbler. A radial line.

Ideally but rarely seen, the tumbler stop should almost hit the bridle when the cock comes to rest on the lockplate. This prevents the mainspring from opening wide and blowing out the lock inlet should the cock fall off the axle.

[Mark Elliott]

I rely on notes I took at one or two of Keith Casteel's presentations on lock tuning at Dixon's.    He gives it most every year.    Jim Chambers also usually gives a seminar on lock making at Dixon's.   He also often teaches a lock making class at the NMLRA Gunsmithing Workshop.    Then there is lots of good information buried throughout this site.     

There is also an Rifle magazine article by John Bivens on how to properly assemble a Siler lock kit.   I know that is not about how to tune a lock as such, but it tells you what a properly assembled lock should look like.  That article is in a collection of articles entitled Gunsmithing Tips & Projects.   I believe I purchased my copy from TOTW.     

The bottom line is that with an already assembled lock, there isn't much to do except to stone/polish the bearing surfaces.   The full cock notch and sear nose may need to be reshaped a little with a stone depending on the type of trigger you are using.  I also find that the fly can be a little too high on some locks.    You have to really know what you are doing with these changes as you can make the lock unsafe or dysfunctional.   If you find any major problems, then the lock should go back to the manufacturer.   

By major problems I mean like the tumbler not being parallel to the plate and bridle; too much slop between the sear and sear screw, or to much slop between the frizzen and frizzen screw, or the frizzen fitted too high so that you can't get it to close flat against the pan.   Of course, all these things are a matter of degree.   In a commercially made product, there has to be a fairly wide range of tolerances.   You would only send something back that is at the extremes of the tolerance range.    Otherwise,  you are not likely to get something back that is better.   

[ddoyle]

Since you asked for a book:

In addition to the titles mentioned above,

 Steve Culver Firearms Lock Design 

Another Book for you if you are willing to learn some german: Peter H. Kunz Restaurieren Von Vorderladerwaffen No translation that I know of but Kunz has some other Anglophiled lock publications that might be of interest. All free.

The Stelle and Harrisons 1883 book How to be a Gunsmith was reprinted and has some stuff to teach.

You might also get a copy of vol1 of The Shotgun My copy is missing so I cannot recall the author or really confirm if vol 1 or vol2 is of interest to lock students.

Brockway has some knowledge to share on locks In Recreating the Double Barrel Shotgun

Lauber  Edited/Published a book called Build your own Flintlock

Pryor Mountain Bill Published a Book maybe called: Hand Forging the....Lock It is available thru inter library loan from some small branch library in some small town in western USA. Treat it carefully.

The Journal of Historical Arms Making is reputed to have published some work on Flintlocks but I am still waiting for the interlibrary loan copy to be available so do not know anything about it.

ALR maintains a huge and unprecedented pool of knowledge in the form of Posts by the likes of Bob Roller and the rest of the 30-40-50 years of experience crowd. Really valuable because they talk in terms of the actuall material you will likely have come to hand.

Have fun with it-