One of my bucket list rifles is a very early rifle stocked or re-stocked in the colonies. Examples that interest me are the “Tulip rifle” and the “Natty Bumpo” rifle. I picked up some lock externals from Ron Scott I believe. Lockplate, cock, frizzen, and frizzen spring. It’s a beauty but “gutless” (no internals). I decided to use some Siler internals I picked up here.
Lo and behold the lockplate is too thick for the Siler tumbler axle. I bet there are some Davis internals that would work but I'm a cheapie. So last night I extended the tumbler axle using a piece of O1 drill rod threaded into the tumbler screw hole. I will braze it together. Old timey gunsmiths brazed and quenched tumbler fixes because the transition temp of pure brass braze is higher than the critical temp of high carbon steels. You can braze a tumbler, just see the braze “freeze” and quench and get a hard part. Here are some pix of the lock and how I approached it. Now I can get a good square tenon for the cock to rest on.
Below I think you can sort of see that the lockplate where the hole for the tumbler axle is located is thick.
Our ML club meets on Tuesday nights at a member’s home. He has all the needed machines and expertise to do stuff I can’t do at home. There are usually 6 or so guys at different vises or machines working from 7 to 9 PM. Then we retire to the gun room for libations. Is this the life, or what?
